


The Nightshade Witch

by ConnivingOphelia



Category: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Bugs & Insects, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recreational Drug Use, Sadism, Sexual Violence, Sibling Incest, Snakes, Torture, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Rape/Non-con, Voyeurism, scorpions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-11-03 09:19:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10964292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConnivingOphelia/pseuds/ConnivingOphelia
Summary: In the treehouse above the lair, Shock lives with her brothers, a first-aid kit of homemade remedies, and years of dark secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

There is nothing like the sound of the wind.

My hands forget their work and drift down to rest in my lap as I sit here, perfectly still, just listening. Through the grime-fogged window, a wan glow of weak afternoon light trickles in. Outside, the wind howls so mournfully; it’s like a lost and frightened animal, wandering over the spindly and leafless branches, haplessly dodging the tree’s groping fingers. Of course it can’t evade them forever, but it’s trying…it’s trying…

And now I’m trying, trying not to cry again. If only I were more like my brother, who can mask any emotion that dares creep up within him. I’m not so blessed with such control. I’m not blessed with much of anything.

I hold my breath against the shuddery whimpers that claw up my chest, and I stare down at my knees, the sponge in my hand, the bucket by my side. Every child has at some point heard the famous fairy tales, and I envy Cinderella and the life she led. It was a life, despite her complaints, devoid of real misery – not to mention the happy ending. I know better than to hope for a deliverance like that.

With a sudden surge of anger, I stab the sponge into the soapy water with such force that water sloshes over the sides of the bucket. The ice-cold splash on my legs shocks the breath out of me, freezes the unfallen tears. A wavering sigh of relief escapes me as I draw the sponge back out, slowly now, and squeeze out the excess. Safe, for the moment. I return to the task at hand.

I am scouring the weapons in His armory, scrubbing away the rust and the layers of various dried and rotting substances that cling to the surfaces of the blades. It is easy work. I pick up an axe and hold it in my hands, savoring its weight and the feel of the smooth and worn handle. The blade is sharp. I hold my wrist up to the edge and hold my breath, wondering if I have the courage. I don’t.

Behind me, the doorknob grinds and the door creaks open. I drop the axe and close my eyes, unable to stop myself from giving in to the stupid impulse to will myself into invisibility. But the footsteps that enter are far too light and quick to be His. I turn around. The relief that floods through me leaves me limp and warm. “Hey, Lock.”

He hums a wordless response, too focused on digging around my piles of already cleaned weapons. The wheelbarrow he uses to carry them is already full, and still he piles more in until he sways under its weight. It’s far too heavy for him, but he won’t complain. He’s too proud.

The final knife rattles in with a metallic clang, and at last he looks down at me. “We have to go out tonight,” he says.

“Where?”

“Errand. We have to fetch someone for Him.”

My head aches. “Who?”

Lock shrugs. “Just another defaulted debtor. Some asshole from the Halloween Underground. We have to go this evening. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to – Barrel and I could handle it, I guess.”

“No, I want to.”

He shrugs. Grunting at the arduous task of pushing the overfull wheelbarrow, he wobbles toward the door and leaves me alone in the armory. I stare down at my hands. There’s a tempest of confused, muddled feelings washing around inside me, like the soapy water in the bucket at my side. I want to talk to someone about what I’m feeling, but there is no one to listen. I close my eyes and imagine myself seated contentedly on a big, soft couch in a luxurious sitting room, near a glowing fire shedding warm light on my face. Beside me I imagine Jack Skellington, his arm around me, stroking my hair not with selfish cruelty but with simple affection. He is asking me what’s wrong, and I am easily explaining to him. “I feel so guilty,” I am saying.

“Don’t feel guilty,” Jack would say. “There’s no reason for guilt. None of this is your fault, do you understand? It’s okay. You’re a good person, Shock. It’s not your fault.”

I sigh aloud. I can almost hear his voice. I can almost believe him. This is a beautiful fantasy, happiness swirling like the rainbows on the sides of a soap bubble. But with the a soap bubble’s fragility, my fantasy easily pops, sending me plunging back into the reality of the here and the now. The sponge and the bucket and the weapons, the treehouse and the monster deep below and all the burning secrets that are a part of it all. This is my reality, and I am stupid to even try to imagine otherwise. I snatch up the sponge and dagger and I scrub until it shines, so clean and smooth I can see my face. I stare at the reflection. I don’t look like me, not like how I feel. My mask is nearby, and quickly I pick it up and slip it over my face, then glance once more at the dagger’s shiny surface. Much better. Far less ugly.

In a few hours I am finished with my work, and my brothers and I set off on our errand. The air around us is silent, and few people are on the streets at this time of day. The ones who do pass us cross to the opposite side of the street as we approach, quick to avoid our very gazes.

Lock laughs. “Look how stupid everyone is! Doesn’t it make you feel powerful?”

I don’t answer.

“Watch! Watch this!” He cuts across the street and creeps behind a trash can, out of sight of the oncoming passerby. I can’t see who it is; that side of the street is all awash in shadow. I recognize the person as he approaches, at the same moment that Lock deems him close enough to leap from behind the trash can, shrieking terrifyingly. There is nothing I can do to stop him. The person jumps back in surprise, and I grab Barrel’s wrist and drag him across the street.

Lock’s victim has regained his composure by the time we get to him, smiling serenely down upon us. Lock has realized his mistake; his ears turn bright red, and I can imagine the look of horror spreading across his face behind the mask.

“Well, well,” says Jack Skellington. “If it isn’t Halloween’s favorite little hooligans.”

He isn’t angry, as I expected him to be; actually he seems rather amused. I glance at Lock, who is motionless in Jack’s thin shadow, standing in that silently brave manner we have over the years learned to display when staring into the face of rage. But Jack’s is not the face of rage, and I begin to feel relieved, though I try not to show it.

“Practicing your scares for Halloween?” Jack asks, smiling. “Doing pretty well. Halloween is only a few weeks away, you know, so keep at it. Try not to permanently injure someone, though.”

We mumble agreement in unison and hurry off as quickly as possible, trotting to the other side of the street.

Once Jack is out of sight, Barrel whacks Lock with his lollipop, leaving a sticky orange circle on the red surface of his mask. “You idiot! What’d you have to go and do that for?”

Lock pushes him to the ground, snarling, “Shut the hell up, weenie!”

I kick Lock in order to quiet them both. He kicks me back, but then is still. “Let’s just get this guy and be done with it, okay?” I say.

We keep walking through the winding, jagged streets of Halloweentown, swiftly and without speaking. We are very familiar with this part of town; we’ve been on countless errands for Him here, and we know the dangers all too well.

The alley is dark, and the dim light that is able to spill on the bricks from the tiny window slit of the foreboding door looks greasy, unclean. Lock’s instructions say we would find our man here. I wish we didn’t have to come to this place to find him, that we could go somewhere else, somewhere much nicer.

Lock raps on the door with an air of arrogance. A voice asks for the password. “No password,” Lock calls. “Open up. We come on orders from Oogie Boogie.”

There is a short silence, and slowly the door opens and we step into the place. The darkness of the bar does nothing to disguise the grime that settles on every worn and sticky surface. In the back of the room near the wobbly stage where the strippers dance, the bass player is the first to notice us. The rest of the band’s music peters out after his bass chords fall away, and silence settles on the room like a fog rolling in. Activity all around us slowly grinds to a halt, everyone stops and stares at us with stricken expressions frozen on their faces. Each one of them seems to have something to fear; each one of them seems to look guilty of having had dealings with Him, and the sight of us can only mean bad news.

We stand there in the center of the room against dozens of pairs of eyes. Lock crosses his arms in a brilliant façade of toughness. “We’re here for Clarence,” he says quietly.

“He ain’t here,” someone calls.

“Oh, he’s here,” says Lock. “He’s here. He don’t want to come out? That’s fine. You know why? I’ll tell you why: because we’ll find him. And when we do, it won’t be just Clarence’s ass that gets plastered to the wall, oh no no no. We’ll have the asses of each and every one of you bastards, you fools, conspiring against Oogie Boogie.” He pauses for a second, savoring the heady silence. “So just go ahead. You think you can get us to play hide-and-seek with you? No, that’s kid stuff. We’re not kids. We’re just the black spot messengers, the ones who bring you your death sentence. Won’t Mr. Boogie be delighted! He thought He was only going to have one victim tonight, and now it appears as though he’ll have…let’s see…five, six…eleven…seventeen…well, I’ll be, there must be more than twenty of you. Won’t that be a sight, the blood of more than twenty lying dirty snakes oozing on his torture chamber floor! Can’t wait to see that! So, I’ll be seeing you people tonight, then. But not for too long!” He turns to go. “Carry on, ladies,” he tosses over his shoulder to the dancers who still stand uncertainly on the platform stage.

“Wait!” someone calls. We stop, turn slowly around. A wolfman hunched on a bar stool fidgets and glances around the room. “C’mere.”

Barrel and I glance at Lock, who steps calmly up to the man. We follow. “You know where he is?”

The wolfman licks his lips and lowers his voice. “I might.”

Silence for a moment.

“You gonna tell us?” Lock asks.

“How badly you wanna know?”

“How badly you wanna live?” Lock has hopped up onto the bar and now holds the wolfman’s collar in his hand, a dagger at his throat – one from the pile in the armory, I notice, that I had cleaned earlier today. “Lemme give you a hint…you probably want to tell me.”

The wolfman is wide-eyed, openmouthed. He stammers intelligibly for a few seconds before blurting, “The counter…he’s behind the counter!”

Barrel and I scramble to the bartop to stand beside Lock, ready to aid him if there should be any trouble. Clarence stands slowly, his hands held up in a surrender. Lock laughs at the absurdity of the big, round clown shaking in fear before three kids. “Well, hello. I’m so pleased you could join us. You have a choice: you may come quietly with us and not give us any problems, or we will bring you with us and we’ll give you problems. Your choice.”

“Wh-what…where…where are we going?” he stutters. The propeller on his beanie hat trembles with each quaking word he speaks.

“We’re going to see Oogie Boogie,” Lock answers in his most condescending voice. “Actually, that’s not entirely true. _You’re_ going to see Oogie Boogie. _We_ are going to listen in on this inevitably entertaining show that will take place. And then, maybe you’ll go home. With or without your major body parts.”

The color drains from the clown’s infamous tear-away face, which doesn’t look half so terrifying now. Lock laughs raucously and hops down from the bar, sauntering away. I pick up two serrated knives from behind the counter and hand one to Barrel, who jabs the point into Clarence’s back. “Get moving, lard-ass,” he sneers. “And keep your hands up.”

We move slowly out of the bar. I slam the heavy door behind us. The clown glances at his unicycle chained to the lamppost as we pass, and his steps falter for a moment. I jab the point of my knife into his back, feel it push against the pliable rolls of fat beneath his polka-dot shirt. “Don’t even think about it,” I snap.

“I’m not, I’m not!” he yells. The echoes of his terrified voice ripple down the alley. He jumps as Barrel’s knife pushes against him on the other side.

“Keep your fat ass moving,” says Lock. “And keep your hands _up_.”

We make our way back to His house without further incident; the clown is an ideal prisoner, too paralyzed with fear to realize that he is twice as big as the three of us put together, and could overpower us with ease. We arrive at the house and bind his hands behind his back, and then shove him through the conference door into His lair. We don’t follow; we aren’t allowed in when He is holding a conference. Lock slams the door behind him and I bolt it securely, and then the three of us rush upstairs so as not to miss any of the ensuing show.

It has begun without us as we get to the window. I squint into the darkness below and strain to hear what is being said. It’s mostly muffled, but it unfolds like most of the other dramas we eavesdrop on from our unseen place at the window. His soft voice, deceptive with false mercy, gives way to the victim’s desperate pleas. Then at last, screams and laughter. They’re the resonant cackles that turn my insides to ice in the prison of my room, but out here echoing over the distance and directed at some other hapless unfortunate, they send a thrill through my chest. _Get him_ , I silently cheer behind my mask. _Give it to him._

The final scream resonates all the way down each vertebra of my spine before it tapers off into weak sobs. Barrel shifts from one foot to the other and back again, a squirming move that borders on indecent. Lock stands motionless, but I can see him clenching and stretching his fingers like spiders unfurling. I know they feel it too, the last echoic memories of the shrieks dancing through their brains and lighting up their nervous systems.   The sounds below morph into a piteous, low-pitched keening underscoring His baritone snickers as He stomps across the room and slams a door. The keening continues alone for a while, then pauses every few seconds. We can hear the low, sibilant slide of a body dragging its mass across the floor inch by torturous inch.

“It’s gonna take him forever to get to the door,” says Barrel. Lock grunts in agreement.

I feel a sudden pang of guilt, the pull of our shared victimhood, an inexplicable desire to rush down there, bandage him up, help him outside, reassure him that the worst is over and he’s escaped far more nightmarish horrors. I cross my arms and hug myself tight, root myself to the spot where I stand.

“What do you think, did He break a kneecap?” asks Barrel.

Lock shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I heard something snap – He did something to his legs, or else that guy would be running out of there.”

“Yeah, but I think He cut something off. I think He cut off a foot.”

I glance between my brothers’ faces, their identical deadpan expressions. “Oh, I hope not.” They look up at me. “I hate cleaning up blood.”

They look away again, back at the closed grate. “Yeah, it’s gross,” says Lock.

“It’s hazardous,” says Barrel. “You know this asshole is probably a needle junkie.”

We all fall silent, all staring at the crossed bars of the grate. The crisscrossed lines fill my vision like the walls of a cage. I feel swallowed up by the desolate word _hazardous_ , the way it paints every facet of my existence. My life should be plastered with caution tape, flashing yellow lights, blaring alarms. I suppress a shudder and turn away, stalk back down the corridor, leaving them both behind.

Alone, upstairs, I stand for a moment in the doorway of my room and breathe in the silence. The clown’s fading screams still echo like distant thunder through my head. _You’re a good person, Shock. None of this is your fault_. The utter ludicrousness of my stupid little fantasy propels a quiet, bitter laugh from my throat. I cross the room to the bed that stands against the wall, looking neat and innocent and neatly fixed, inviting as a siren song. I sit on the edge and stare out the window. The moon is hidden somewhere and its light doesn’t reach my room. I listen for the wind, but it isn’t blowing, and the long branches of the trees are still.


	2. Chapter 2

By sunrise I’ve assembled my arsenal of mop buckets and cleaning liquid, long rubber gloves to protect against the noxious chemicals. The boys are nowhere to be found, damn them. I take my supplies around the back entrance and steel myself with a few steadying breaths before I push through the conference room door.

The place is empty and still. I flip the light switch and gaze around the room at the motionless animatrons, rendered eerie in their ordinariness under the harsh fluorescent overheads. Without darkness and blacklight, this place is like the circus the morning after a show – shabby and uninteresting, the performers unrecognizable devoid of their facepaint and sequins. I walk past the slot machine cowboys and run my fingers over the mute, inanimate shapes of their rifles. The metal feels cold and vacant as an abandoned building.

The worst of the mess is on the roulette wheel on the floor, confined mainly to Red 13. There are splatters on the surrounding tiles, and a diminishing red-brown trail toward the door where Clarence must have dragged himself to freedom at the end of the ordeal. But for the most part it’s not as bad as I’d feared. No severed pieces of leftover clown either, mercifully. I kneel down and set to work mopping up the congealed mess.

As I clean, my brain switches itself slowly off and settles into the numbness of muscle memory. My world shrinks down until its borders include nothing but the push and pull of my arms across the filthy floor, the swish of the soapy red water pooling around my knees, the metallic tang rising up to my nose as I agitate the crusty remains around me. Disgusting as this task might be, I can’t help but find comfort in the numbness as my body methodically works its repetitive back-and-forth movements to clear away the mess. I have near-total radio silence in the chamber of my brain, and it’s almost pleasant.

It takes hours to clean it up completely. It would have been a much easier job with my brothers’ hands helping, and I can’t help my burn of annoyance that they would disappear when they knew this task awaited us. By the time I’ve finished, the low burn has ignited into a flickering flame of real anger. I sling my cleaning supplies back into the basket and stomp to the back door to empty my frothing, bloody mop water into the dust. I lug everything back upstairs and leave it all in a heap in the hallway as I strip off my stinking, sodden clothes. I reek of bleach and old blood; it has sunk down through the fabric and soaked into my skin. Retching, I step into the bathtub and scrub myself until my skin burns and the water turns cold. I can still detect the stink even under the smell of the soap.

Hours later, the faint stench keeps wafting up from under my clean clothes and stopping me in my tracks. I try doing a load of laundry, hoping the harsh lye scent will overpower me instead as I scrub up and down the washboard. I collect the trash and carry it to the dump, but even the ripe stink of the mounds of garbage can’t mask the smell of death and poison that emanates from my body. It is inescapable. It’s inevitable.

As evening draws closer and I stand on a stepstool in the kitchen, slicing root vegetables for a giant bubbling stockpot, Lock pushes through the door and comes to stand near me at the counter. At the sight of him my nearly forgotten flame of anger flares back up again. Where has he possibly been all day, while I’ve been working myself to death? Where was he this morning when I crouched on my hands and knees and scrubbed away the remains of yesterday’s torture session? I shoot him a glare and go back to my chopping.

Lock picks up a beet and turns it over in his hands, but his eyes are faraway and focused on nothing.   He puts the beet back on the counter, and it rolls down to the edge and hits the floor. He watches it fall.

“Do you _mind_?” I snarl. My voice comes out louder and laced with a deeper disgust than I’d realized I was feeling.

“Sorry.” He bends down with dazed slowness and picks it up. Instead of replacing it onto my vegetable pile, he holds it in his hand like a baseball, like a weapon, squeezing his fingers on it over and over like palpitating a failing heart. He seems fidgety and spooked.

“So where were you guys this morning? Do you realize I had to clean up the mess all by myself?”

He shifts his weight and puts the beet down before his answers. His hand strays to the front of his pants and he pulls on the material there. “He gave us instructions.”

“What the hell kind of instructions? The instructions always include post-conference housekeeping.”

He shifts his weight again, as if the floor beneath his feet is becoming too hot to stand still. “We had an errand.”

“Yeah? You couldn’t help me clean up before you went off on your stupid errand? Do you know how many _hours_ I was down there scrubbing?”

He tugs at his pants again; his expression is miserable. “We had to return the foot.”

I put my knife back on the cutting board. “The _what_?”

“The clown’s foot. I had to box it up, and then Barrel and I had to track him down and give it to him. It was disgusting – it started to stink. There were blackflies trying to get into the box by the time we finally found where that asshole was hiding. Believe me, I would have much rather stayed and cleaned the floors. We did you a favor.”

I don’t know what to say to this. He’s right, I ended up with the better end of the deal after all. But I’m still too angry to acknowledge this. I pick up the knife and start slicing again. In the silence, Lock reaches down and fidgets with the front of his pants once more.

“Oh my _god._ ” I slam the knife back down on the cutting board, knocking carrot slices to the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He keeps his eyes on the stockpot, on the fallen vegetables, anywhere but mine. “I’m bit,” he whispers miserably.

“Bit? When?”

Scarlet flushes across his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears. “Last night.”

“What was it?”

He kicks with feeble movements at the carrot slices at his feet. “I don’t know. Snake. Spider maybe. I’m probably going to die.”

I kill the fire from under the pot and climb down off the stepstool. “You’re not going to die. But come on, you need to put something on it just in case.”

He follows me with hunched shoulders all the way up to my room and my first aid kit, walking like a prisoner to the gallows. He’s too lost in despair to realize how much he’s overreacting: a bite from the snake or the poisonous spiders would have left him in frothing convulsions long before now. I twist the deadbolt on the doorknob behind us and unpack the first aid kit, line up the bottles of antivenin and salve and antiseptic in a neat row with the cotton gauze and the suture thread, my armory of undoing all that is done to us. “All right, let me see.”

His face goes from flushed to stricken white. “I’m not showing you.”

“Yes you are. You need my help. Take them off or I’ll take them off for you.”

He looks like he’ll throw up as he undoes the button on his pants and slowly lowers them to his knees. His stands there a moment, frozen in humiliation, looking at the floor between us.

“So show me, where did He get you?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and lifts one hand to brush the underside of his dick, flaccid and withdrawn just like the rest of him. “Here.”

I push his hand away and look for myself. There’s no oozing bite, just an irritated puncture wound right on the frenulum. Probably just a pincher beetle snagged him a good one. I don’t remark on this, which would only add to his embarrassment. I know the experience far too well, pinned beneath His shifting weight, the skittering caress of the snake’s tongue across my body, poisonous spiders darting out of his eyeholes to scuttle across my skin. The building blocks of nightmares. “This looks painful. But you’ll be all right. You just need some salve. This is the good kind, with nightshade oil. Here.” I squirt the salve into my hand and rub it around to warm it before I smear it onto his injury.

He sucks in a breath as I rub it in, and his eyes fly open to look at me with unguarded misery. “Okay, that’s enough,” he whispers in a voice I can barely hear.

“No, you need to really rub it in to activate the anesthetic elements of the nightshade oil,” I explain as I stroke him from base to tip and back again. His cock thickens at my touch, and he leans away from me, pulling himself back. I tighten my grip. “You have to make sure the salve really gets into the injury. It has antiseptic properties too, you know, but it’s useless if it doesn’t really penetrate into the wound. You don’t want to get an infection, do you?”

“Stop it,” he hisses. He reaches down to yank my hand away, but I snake my other hand up and clamp my fingernails around the skin of his testicles. He gasps as I dig them in, not hard enough to injure, nowhere near as sharply as the beetle’s pincers, but he takes his hand back and closes his eyes. Tears leak from the corners.

I feel high with power, the anger I nursed all day feeding on his helplessness that I hold in my hands. I stroke faster, eyes on his face. Tears keep trickling silently from the corners of his closed eyes. He keeps his lips pursed together, his body rigid, his breathing heavy but even. I tighten my grip and move my arm with deeper, longer strokes, like the earlier motions of scrubbing the gory roulette wheel. I feel his cock harden further as his brow furrows, his lips part to make way for his quickening breaths. He tenses his whole body and comes without a sound. The semen dribbles out weakly but thick, coating my fingers like melted candle wax. I keep stroking until the last contraction dies away, and only then do I release my grip on his testicles. I smear my come-drenched hand across his sleeve, and he opens his eyes and stares at the mess I’ve made on his shirt. Then he turns his eyes to me. The betrayal and loathing there fill me with a rush of power so intense it makes me nauseous. “You fucking evil _cunt_ ,” he whispers. He wipes his eyes on his clean sleeve.

The doorknob turns, then rattles against the bolt. We fly apart from each other in shared terror. I rush to the door and trust that Lock will have himself put back together by the time I pull it open.

It’s only Barrel, standing there with his arms crossed, scowling at me. “What the hell?” he demands as he pushes inside. “You know deadbolts aren’t allowed.” The unspoken phrase _unless He locks them_ rings in the air as clearly as if he’d said it aloud. Barrel’s gaze sweeps over the first aid kit, Lock’s red-rimmed eyes and sticky shirtsleeve. By the time he looks back at me the blankness in his eyes speaks volumes. “I only wondered if you needed help with dinner,” he says. “Your soup isn’t boiling and the vegetables aren’t chopped.”

“I’m getting to it. I can do it by myself. Put all that first aid stuff back in the box, Lock, if you don’t mind.” I brush past them both and stalk back downstairs.

Within half an hour the stockpot is back to boiling, the vegetables all chopped and slowly turning in the bubbling broth. I stand over the pot and stare into its steamy depths, watch the clear liquid turn a bloody red from the beets. It resembles my mop bucket from this morning, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to eat it.

Footsteps approach behind me, light and quick and nonthreatening. I don’t turn around as they cross the room and head toward the ice box in the far corner. “It’s going to be ready soon,” I call without looking, “so don’t go eating any snacks.”

“I’m just getting some ice.” Barrel’s voice sounds strange and thick, and I turn to him. His cheek looks swollen; the skin around his eye is puffy and pink and beginning to bruise. 

“Jeez, what happened to you?”

“Fucking Lock knocked out my fucking _tooth_ is what happened to me.” He spits a wad of blood onto his hand and wipes it on his pantleg, then presses the ice to his swollen cheek. He glares up at me as if this is all my fault. I turn back to the stove and stare into the soup until I hear his footsteps stalk back out of the kitchen.

We do this to each other, torture breeding smaller and pettier tortures. Spreading the anger down the chain of command like ripples through water. The redistribution of the rancid energy that buzzes through the live wires of this hellish place. I can’t explain it, I can’t stop it. It simply _is_.

The anger that swells up within me catches me by surprise; it takes all my willpower to keep myself from knocking over the soup pot in rage. I am suddenly so sickened by all this that I want to scream myself hoarse. I am so tired of my victimhood – I want to slice it out of me like a cancerous tumor. But I pick up the spoon and give the soup a stir, knock the vegetables against each other below the liquid’s surface, then I ladle it into the waiting bowls. The same routine without deviation, without fail. We are birds caught up in the irrational movement of our dysfunctional flock, and it isn’t an option to break away.


	3. Chapter 3

After nightfall, when the rooms are darkened and everything is silent, I creep from my room and steal down the elevator and away from the treehouse. I need to replenish all the salve that got used up this afternoon. This seems like it ought to be a task that can wait until morning, but experience has taught me that it’s never a good idea to go without first aid supplies. I glance behind me at the dark windows of the house receding into the horizon as I half-walk, half-jog away. It won’t do to be gone for very long.

The town square isn’t quite deserted, but the few residents milling around seem to shy away from me as I pass through. Even all alone, without my brothers at my side, I must not look as vulnerable as I feel. I keep my head down and walk faster, past the fountain, off the main walk, down the twisting cobblestone path toward the graveyard.

Sally’s little plot is around the corner, away from the main section of headstones. I know she thinks of it as her secret garden, but there’s nothing hidden or mysterious about it – merely unassuming and out of the way, like I wish I could live my life. She once pulled me over here herself to offer information about the herbs she grows: how to extract the nightshade oil to make the anesthetic salve, how to distill the witch hazel for antiseptic ointment, how to use the meadowsweet to cool a fever and the aloe to soothe a burn. One captive to another passing along little tricks of the trade in hushed murmurs without eye contact. But I know how she lovingly measures the nightshade, sneaking in a carefully calculated, non-lethal dose. I don’t truly believe we are in the same boat at all.

I kneel down before the nightshade bushes like a worshiper at the altar, and I reach out and run my hands over the papery leaves. It’s my favorite plant in the garden, the most useful, the most dangerous. I pluck off a branch and begin crumbling the dry leaves to dust in my hands, piling them up with care. I half-listen to the voices from up the hill that waft their way down to me on the wind, languid and indistinct. Next comes a few tentative notes on an accordion, and I glance up to the top of the hill to see the faint silhouettes of the Halloweentown band, set up against the gate around Skellington manor, preparing their nightly serenade to the passersby as they straggle home for the night. A few deep twangs from the bass join in, and then the saxophone lets out a soft, sorrowful wail that makes the hairs on my arms prickle. The treehouse is too far from the center of town for me to hear the band’s evening performances, and for this I am glad. I would not welcome their eerie music as a nightly soundtrack underscoring my life.

I turn my attention back to my little harvest, but soon comes the staccato clicking of heels on cobblestone. I glance up at the distant figure approaching down the walk with a rapid and self-assured gait. It’s a vampiress, dressed to the nines, steady and sure in her impossibly high stilettos. She brushes past the band at the fence with a regal toss of her head as she pulls the gate open with a creak. I watch her ascend the steps of Skellington manor and disappear through the door.

I turn back to my task, more hurried now, snap off a whole branch and shove it into my bag. From the inside pocket I extract an envelope of rolling papers, and I spread out five to fill with crumbled leaves and twist up into tight little joints. I slip them into my pocket and trudge up the hill to the gate.

I can feel four sets of eyes on me as I approach the fence, but I keep my gaze directly ahead of my feet as I walk up to the handle and reach to open it. The dirge they’re playing ends abruptly, without resolving. “Where you think you’re going, little girl?” sneers the corpse inside the bass. He peers out at me from under his orange hair with wicked eyes.

I don’t answer, just push on the handle to open the gate. The accordion player reaches out and knocks my hand away like swatting a bothersome fly. “What you up to? A little breaking and entering? Kitten-cat burglary?”

“Going about it the wrong way, ain’t you?” asks the saxophone player. “Walking right past some witnesses?”

“Besides,” says the accordion player, “you gotta wait till the homeowner’s _gone_. He’s home now.”

“Oh, she knows he’s home.” The corpse narrows his eyes at me. “She knows he’s got a guest, too. She ain’t a cat burglar, she’s a peeping tom. A little baby pervert.”

The band all starts laughing at me, and I reach into my pocket and pull out four of the nightshade joints. I hold them out like a hand of cards, and the band members all fall silent. They stare at my offering like precious riches. “I was never here,” I tell them.

They reach out and snag the joints from me, pass around a lighter to set them ablaze. The bass player lights one for the corpse and puts it wordlessly into his mouth before lighting his own. “Sure, kitten,” the corpse says out of the side of his mouth. “We ain’t never seen you before. Go and get your jollies and don’t make any trouble.”

Like I need to take orders from these idiots. Like I would ever make trouble for Jack Skellington. I pull the gate open just wide enough to slip through, and I stalk around the side of the house. The windows of the bedroom turret are dark, which is just as well since they’re impossible to see into anyway. There’s flickering light from the large picture window on the first storey, and I pull myself into the branches of the yard’s lone tree and climb up into the higher boughs until I can get a good view. The leafless branches make me feel exposed, and I can’t help wishing for more cover even though I know the darkness masks me completely.

The flickering light is coming from the wide fireplace in his living room, and it throws the whole room into a tide of dramatic shadows. There’s a pair of long-stemmed glasses on the table in front of the large window, one drained dry, the other still holding a splash of dark wine and a lipstick stain along the rim. Directly in front of the dancing flames stands Jack with the vampiress, so close together I can hardly pick out where he ends and she begins in the orange light surrounding their silhouettes. I squint and keep watching. He’s rubbing her shoulders, she’s lolling her head back in pleasure. I can’t name the emotions that creep up within me – longing, envy, annoyance? I pull the fifth joint out of my pocket and fumble blindly in the folds of my bag for my matches. I hesitate to light it – won’t they notice the burst of flame in the tree’s twisted branches? But they aren’t looking, they’re a thousand miles away from where I am. I strike the match and light the end, suck in a greedy pull of the heady nightshade smoke. It smells green and musky, like spice and poison and dark arousal.

He pushes the lacy jacket off her arms and lets it drop to the floor, runs his long fingers over the length of her bare arms, down again and back, then to her chest over the swell of her breasts. He moves like a tango dancer, every movement slow and filled with barely tethered strength. She is like a ragdoll under his touch, helpless to stand of her own accord, propped up against his body like a dead woman. I suck in a lungful of smoke and I wait, making up arbitrary rules: if I exhale before he kisses her lips, I lose. My pulse slows within my veins as he leaves a trail of ardent kisses up her arm to her shoulder, buries them on her neck like hidden treasure. It takes him an eternity to work his way up beyond the boundary of her jawbone; my vision begins to swim and darken around the edges and I doubt he’ll ever make it to her mouth. I should concede my defeat; I lose no matter what. Just as I begin to relax the tensed muscles of my diaphragm, he clasps her face in his long hands and kisses her on the lips. I keep hold of my straining breaths for an extra moment, distracted by the sight of his passionate movements, the way his whole body seems a virile extension of the pressure of his mouth against hers, drinking in her warmth with graceful movements like a macabre ballet. The air falls out of my nose in a slow flutter of its own accord as I watch. I wrap my hand around the branch, anchoring myself to its safety; the anesthetic smoke and the heady tableau have seeped deep into my veins and left me woozy, languid, liable to crumble to the ground heedless as a dying leaf. I take another hit.

Moments speed up and slow down like film on a malfunctioning reel. I am so high my brain thinks it can hear the crackling coming from their fireplace, feel its heat against my face like staring into a nuclear detonation. The vampiress sinks to her knees in slow motion, frees his cock from his pinstriped pants. I watch her take it into her mouth, watch her expression contort with disgust and effort. His eyes are closed, his head rolled back, he can’t see what a chore his pleasure is to her. She stretches her grimaced lips and works on just the barest tip of him, her suppressed gag written all over her face, and I dig my fingers into the bark of the branch. I can hear the hatred seething within me like the hissing logs on the fire.

By the time they’ve both sunk to the floor, my high begins to dissipate and takes my anger along with it. I’m left feeling like a shelled oyster, sucked dry and discarded on the shore. A low rush of melancholy flows into the empty spaces the rage left behind. He gathers up her skirts and she aligns her hips with his, and they fuck like dogs on the rug. His expression is full of rapture; hers is bored and vacant. I feel as though I’m looking at two unrelated photographs masterfully spliced together where they would never belong. Why is she here with him? What choices drew the dotted lines on the map of their lives to bring them into this night together? And why is _my_ map devoid of roads and coordinates and all choice whatsoever, just a blank page going nowhere? My brain bucks at the enormity of the impossible question, and I can’t contemplate it. I don’t want to be here anymore, hiding in the darkness, a voyeur into this universe. I slide down the arms of the tree in a slithering descent, trusting the pull of gravity more than my own tingling and numb hands. The ground below my legs feels spongy and unstable as I slink back toward the gate.

The musicians lean against the fence like drunkards, instruments dangling from their fingers. Their faces look dreamy with bliss, nothing like how I feel: shipwrecked against the rocks of my rage and left to flounder in the lingering sadness. “You see what you wanted to see there, kitten?” sneers the saxophone player.

I look at the twisting road ahead of me and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, over and over against the uneven cobblestones. I pretend I can’t hear their laughter behind me. Their instruments twang to life and slide into near-cohesion, forming a looping progression of chords that sounds all wrong. Is it them, or is it my ears, my addled brain? I keep plodding until the sound fades away, until I veer off the stones and onto the twisted unpaved path back to the center of my own world.

Over the dark horizon the hills and gnarled trees seem to part as I walk to make way for the looming shape of the treehouse. It sits in the distance, something malevolent and alive about its stillness, as if it is poised to spring. I feel like I’m pushing through some substance more viscous than mere air. Every step is like struggling through the force of the tide. I just want to slow to a stop, sink to the ground, spread myself across the scrubby earth and cracked soil beneath my feet and wait quietly for the vultures to pick my bones white and clean. But my legs propel me forward, incessant and involuntary as my mindless beating heart, my sluggish inertia pulling me back toward where I always go, where I belong.

_But I don’t belong here._

The unfamiliar thought glimmers sharp as a razor blade in a candy apple. My steps slow, then quicken; I stumble, I right myself.

_I don’t belong here._

I stand at the base of the treehouse and close my eyes while I attempt to control my ragged breathing. I bypass the creaky elevator toward the winding trunk leading to the front drawbridge. Inch by inch I pull the heavy iron handle and guide the door down on its rusty hinges until the gap is just wide enough for me to clamber through. Inside, I pull it back into place. I can feel its every tremor and creak all along my nerve endings, reverberating in the very marrow of my bones. The whole architecture of this place is rigged to entrap me, to track and report my comings and goings. As silently as I ease the drawbridge back into its upright latch, I know that elsewhere in this house He can feel the vibrations of my returning presence. I hurry toward my room, holding my bag tight against me like a secret.

_I don’t belong here._

The door to Barrel’s room bursts open just as I pass. I melt into the shadows and hold my breath, willing the staccato tattoo of my heart to calm itself. Out of the doorway He lumbers with the slurring movements of sated rage. I squeeze my eyes closed, then peek through my lashes. As He turns away from me and begins to stagger back down the hall, I relax my shoulders and breathe again. Then He whirls on me, closing the distance with nightmarish and impossible speed, throws me back against the wall. Starbursts fill my vision as my head cracks backward. I bite my tongue, taste the iron tang of my blood. I stay silent.

“Where you been, kitten?” He snarls in a viscous whisper.

My mouth drops open in a thrill of terror at the nickname, the echoes of the banter from the musicians earlier. How could He know? Could His reach extend so far? I say nothing.

He presses His face even closer to me, and the snake winds out of His mouth and flicks its forked tongue against my lips. He inhales deeply, then exhales in a foul gust into my face. “Blood and nightshade,” He murmurs. “Someone’s been a _bad_ girl.” He presses Himself up against me. Rough burlap against my body, humming like the electricity from tension wires. He takes His hand and traces the outline of my jaw, then abruptly grabs me around the throat. I freeze in His grasp. He leans in closer and I can feel the snake’s tongue tickling against the opening of my ear canal. “Naughty kitten needs to learn to behave.” His hand releases my throat and slides a meandering path down the length of my body, detouring to knead my breast, squeeze my hip, twist the skin of my buttocks before snaking back around to grab me between the legs so hard tears spring to my eyes. He pushes me back against the wall again and my head thuds, softer this time, over and over as my body bends to His force. He rubs hard against my cunt like He’s trying to tear me apart. My eyes flutter closed and the pooling tears fall. His snake tongue laps them up. “You’re _mine_ ,” He breathes into my face. “You go _nowhere_.” He takes His hand away and I crumble to the floor.

I keep my eyes on the dirty woodgrain beneath my face while the floorboards shudder beneath his steps down the length of the hallway, the tremors growing fainter with distance until He has gone. I lift my head and rise to my feet. When I peer into the open doorway to Barrel’s room I can see him sitting up in his bed, staring back at me. He grins at me in a leering grimace. Even in the shadows I can see his missing tooth. I step away without a word.

In my room I stash my bag on the shelf and crawl into bed. A dull ache throbs in the back of my head, in the bruised soreness between my legs, thumping in rhythm with my heartbeat. With every pulse of pain the words course through my brain, over and over in a stream of growing certainty. _I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here._ The words wrap around me like ribbons, lead me into dreams. By morning they have seeped into my skin and melted into my veins. I look out on the sunrise with new eyes.

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Be careful, dumbass.”

“I am being careful.”

“Oh my god, you’re not being careful at all.” Lock takes the beetle out of Barrel’s hands and waves it in his face. “You pretty much ripped it in half. Look at the guts coming out.”

Barrel knocks Lock’s hand away without looking him in the eye. “Shut up.” The beetle tumbles out of Lock’s hands and writhes on the ground for a moment before lying still.

“You just gotta remove the legs, you don’t gotta mutilate it.”

“Shut _up_.”

“You –” Lock begins, and then the wind hisses out of his argument and his words fade off. He turns away from Barrel, busies himself with the bucket of doomed insects.

“Asshole,” Barrel mutters, but there’s no fire in his words and his eyes are far away. He pulls himself to his feet, gets his bearings like a sailor on a roiling ocean, and walks stiff-legged down the hill to check the traps we’ve set along the bushes there.

Lock drops the bucket and watches him go. “Jesus. He really got it.” His voice is low and expressionless over the undercurrent of guilt and selfish relief.

I don’t look up from my task of sliding the severed legs into glass jars, sealing them safely inside before the breeze carries them away. I can feel him looking at me, waiting, so I make a noncommittal hum.   Still he waits. When I look up at him, he looks away.

“Of course, not that you would know.” He studies the overcast sky.

I don’t want to take the bait, but I’m too tired to put up resistance. “Okay. And by that you mean?”

“You were gone.”

“I had an errand.” _Replenishing the nightshade salve,_ I can’t say. I twist the lid on the last jar of beetle legs and begin collecting the bodies in a neat pile inside my bucket. When I look back up at Lock, he is still staring pointedly at the clouds, petulant as a jilted lover. “What good would it have done if I’d stayed?” It’s an unfair thing to ask, a trick question.

He turns to me and the glare he shoots at me is so withering I almost laugh. “Why should you get to waltz out in the middle of the night?”

“If you think I’m not going to pay for that, you’re even dumber than you look.”

“Suck my dick.” He turns and starts pitching beetle parts into his bucket.

I laugh, a noise that more closely resembles a snarl. “Well, I would, but you’d probably just _cry_ again.”

He whirls around and marches to where I sit. “God, you’re such a _bitch_.” He shoves me and topples my bucket of beetles.

I’m on my feet and hitting him back before I remember I wasn’t going to take his bait. “Fuck you,” I growl through clenched teeth, snatching my hair out of his fist and aiming a knee to his groin. He twists, I miss, we both hit the ground struggling. The crunch of dead exoskeletons explodes beneath our backs as we roll in the dirt, trying to land a punch.

By the time Barrel returns, we are lying on either side of our destroyed workstation, panting and glaring at each other like watchful predators. We’re dusted over with dirt, sticky with sweat and the smeared guts of the beetles we were supposed to be collecting. An entire morning’s work ruined, and for what? I can’t remember, all I know is the compulsion to wrap my fingers around his neck, someone’s neck, anyone, lies in me deeper than thought, deep as my malformed DNA.

Barrel stares at us, at the mess detonated in our wake, and drops the beetle traps at his feet. He pulls his mask over his face. “You gotta be more careful, dumbass,” he parrots in a mocking monotone.

“Aw, shut your fucking cakehole,” Lock pants.

Barrel ignores him and stalks back down the hill to where we’ve set the last series of traps. I watch his hunched, limping progress, the careful steps he takes to prevent the pain from knifing through him. He looks so small, lost in the tall scrubgrass, a grey figure fading into the grey landscape. I stand, shake off the clinging insect parts, and start toward the town gate.

“Hey!” Lock calls after me. “Just where the fucking _fuck_ do you think you’re going now?”

I ignore him.

“You’re going to get it! When He finds out you’re really going to get it!” His voice shifts away from anger into genuine terror at the peril in which I am placing myself. It’s almost touching. Still I ignore him and push my way through the town gate, into Halloweentown proper. I expect him to call after me again, but he has exhausted himself of warnings. I still feel his eyes on me until I am swallowed up by the city.

My anxiety sings through me like electricity as I hurry through the town square, around the fountain, down the path until the bulbous shape of the laboratory looms into view. I drag my gaze up to the highest turret of the astronomy observatory, all along the strange contours silhouetted against the pale sky. The temptation is overwhelming to turn away and run back to where the evils are familiar, if unpredictable. But I push the mask over my face and stride up to the front door, stand steely and still as the doorbell clangs inside.

It takes a long time before I hear his whirring approach, the heavy groan of the locks turning. The door swings open and the doctor blinks behind his glasses in the sunlight. He is pale and shriveled as a helpless larva. The sight of him fills me with a surge of renewed courage. I know if it comes down to it, the upper hand is mine.

He bares the edge of his teeth in a badly concealed sneer of disgust at the sight of me. “Well, good afternoon.” The cordial tone rings entirely false, and he doesn’t seem to care. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I push my way through the narrow gap between the doorframe and his wheelchair. Inside, I survey the cavernous room like a prospective buyer, with a confidence that blankets my fear like the mask on my face. Behind me I hear him latch the door and pivot the chair to face me. I take a moment for my vision to acclimate to the shadowy interior after the stark, sallow sunlight outside. “Doctor,” I greet. I scan the area for any sign of Sally lurking in the corners, of the halfwit Igor limping nearby. The place seems deserted but not, alive with the electrical hum of all manner of strange machinery. The lab reminds me of the conference room, but more ominous in its unfamiliarity.

“And where are the other two members of your delightful trio, may I ask?” He glides around to the middle of the room and faces me. His expression is neutral and devoid of any hint of intimidation. If I strike any sort of terror in him as I do the other townsfolk, he doesn’t show it.

“I’m working alone. I have a proposition for you.”

“Alone! Oh ho, I’m anxious to hear what you could possibly be proposing.” He glances around at the empty room. “Upstairs, I think.” His chair whirs to life at the flick of the controls, and I follow him up the sloping ramp to the lab above.

The room where he brings me is cluttered all over, glass and metal reflecting the dim blue light that bounces off the curves of the ominous lab instruments and mysterious machines. I square my shoulders and breathe in a steady rhythm of businesslike confidence. On the main workspace tabletop sits a messy collection of tools and materials, scattered around the table with an air of interrupted productivity. I lean in and examine his project, the long lines and twisting joints that resemble some kind of half-finished weapon.

“Ah,” he says in a voice loud enough to rattle the glass beakers and test tubes, “you’ve noticed my current project. This one is probably of great interest to you, actually.”

“Oh, is it.” The gleaming steel bars, tapered edge, the twisting sockets holding the joints, do not look like anything at which I’d glance twice.

“Yes, oh yes.” He picks up the device in delicate gloved fingers, flexes it at the sockets, straightens it again. “It’s just been the work of a few short days, but this little beauty is going to cost the client a pretty penny.” His lips curl up in a sensual smile as he caresses the gleaming edges of his handiwork. “Specialized prosthetics are always such a delight to design.”

I watch him stroke the device like a lover, watch the expression behind his dark glasses as he gazes at what he’s made. All at once I see my strategy opening before me like a vista. I push the mask off so he can get a clear view of the awed, fawning expression I force onto my face. “It’s lovely,” I breathe at the decidedly unlovely contraption. I bring up one hand as if I can’t resist wanting to stroke it too, hover my fingers in midair for a moment before forcing my arm away.

“Yes, it is indeed.” He turns it around as he smiles down at it. “Quite the impressive feat if I do say so. A brilliant combination of engineering and artistry. Most designers approaching this task could never achieve this level of form and function combined. It must be strong enough to support the client’s weight, but lightweight enough for maximum mobility. And of course have the ability to not only clip onto but also assist in the propulsion of a unicycle. Quite a set of criteria.”

I squash the inopportune laugh that bubbles up in the back of my throat. “So you’re working for Clarence.”

He doesn’t look up. “Of course, my dear. Why else would I be constructing a prosthetic limb with a unicycle adapter?” His voice has lost a bit of the sensuous luster as contempt for me creeps in at the edges.

Snapping back into character, I plaster the awestruck smile back on and bend my posture into a subtle curve of submission. “Naturally. And who else could accomplish this? Maybe that clown isn’t as idiotic as we’d thought, if he’s smart enough to bring this task to you." 

The doctor only smiles.

I don’t concede the floor just yet, since the trickle of praise is so effective. “Lucky for him he didn’t waste his time on some lesser hack, or he would probably never walk again, let alone ride. Probably he’ll ride better than ever before now. What a gift you’re giving him.”

“It’s nothing. A trifle. I’ve designed far greater things.”

“Of course, of course you have. This town has your fingerprints all over it. I think the citizens would be lost without your genius.”

“Your victims certainly would be.” He puts the device gently back on the table. “This isn’t the first time I’ve patched up your boss’s carnage, you know.”

I sidle up closer, let my shoulder brush up against his. “I didn’t know.” My hand rests on his arm. “Tell me about it.”

If he’s affected by my touch, he doesn’t betray it. “Well, aside from your ordinary operations like the knee replacements and minor surgeries, did you know I once designed and installed the most ingenious prosthetic tongue?”

I trace my hand along his arm, still it when he glances down, then move again. “I had no idea.”

“Oh yes. When your illustrious boss decided to slice the tongue out of one of his victims, I was the one who saved the day.” He removes his glasses and wipes them on the edge of his lab coat. His eyes, tiny and unfamiliar without them, beam with the heady memory of his genius accomplishments. “I at first attempted to rescue the severed tongue, but due to the nature of the client’s physiology it was impossible to prevent the tissue from going septic almost immediately. A lesser physician would have never managed.”

I can remember the incident as clearly as a fever dream. The Melting Man in the conference room, his sass-talk disappearing abruptly into formless screams as He had enough of the disrespect. It wasn’t an easy cleanup the next day; I hadn’t expected such a relatively small organ to gush so much blood. “You saved his life, and replaced his tongue,” I purr. “Brilliant. So brilliant.”

“Yes.” The word comes out raspy with pleasure.

This is too easy; it’s almost offensive how little work I have to do to lead him where I want him. His bizarrely carnal satisfaction at recounting his own greatness makes executing my plan effortless as falling. All I have to do is keep him talking. “I bet it was the most clever design.”

“Oh, you should have seen it. Titanium construction, seventeen separate torquing joints, telescoping out up to nearly ten inches in length. Yet the whole apparatus weighs less than two ounces. It responds directly to electrical impulses from the brain for maximum dexterity. He could sing opera with the tongue I’ve given him. He could shape words in any language. It was the perfect fusion of science and art, one of my greatest designs." 

The idea of a gleaming metal tongue slithering out of the Melting Man’s mouth like a writhing silverfish is so grotesque it makes me want to gag. I wonder if the doctor knows just how little the Melting Man speaks since the encounter, how his engineering masterpiece is wasted. I force the smile onto my lips, the amazed intensity to burn in my eyes. “You really are a genius,” I tell him. I’m running my hands along both his arms, now, my face close to his so the next move seems only natural. I lean one knee on the wheelchair seat to bring my face close to his. “A true artist.”

“Yes,” he murmurs, the word more breath and moan than actual language.

I slide my other knee up in a movement so slow and sinuous that my intentions aren’t clear until I am already straddling him completely. He makes a move to struggle, but I pin his hands against the wheelchair’s armrests and hold him fast. Beneath me I can feel his erection. I sigh against him with relief that my gamble paid off, and I lean my mouth against the side of his bald head and breathe into his pale ear. “Is there anything you cannot do?” I rock my hips, pushing against his hard-on, and he lets out a high-pitched moan. He twists his wrists but I clamp my hands down against them and dig my fingers into the cold metal armrests. I shift the grinding of my hips to a winding, s-shaped motion to keep his interest locked right where I want it. He stops struggling.

My teeth nip at his ear, and then I lean in even closer to whisper, “So back to my proposition. There is in fact something you can do for me. I need your talent, your genius, your artist’s touch. No one else is good enough. Will you help me?” I start thrusting slower, deeper, like I’m trying to carve out a valley in him. He makes a wordless hum that’s neither a dissent nor an agreement, but beneath me I can feel his hips buck up to meet my thrusts. It’s all the consent I need. “I need an insecticide,” I whisper. I feel his whole body shudder as he comes.

Before his gasping has even stopped, I slide off his lap and onto my feet. While I smooth out my dress, he shifts himself in his chair and pulls himself back up to a more dignified posture. When he speaks, his voice once again has the cold tone of cheery disingenuousness. “An interesting proposition indeed, my dear.” Beneath the pleasant façade I can hear the sneering undercurrents of disgust. He still has not quite caught his breath. “Something to think over, to be sure. Can you come by tomorrow, and I will let you know my decision?”

Tomorrow. Another sneaking exit, when I’m already gambling so much. I need him to agree, so I’ll concede to any condition he tosses out. “Of course.”

“Splendid.” It doesn’t sound like he finds it splendid at all; he sounds distracted, like he’s already cataloged and shelved this encounter. He steers the chair back over to the worktable and picks up a delicate instrument and a tiny screw. “I believe you can see yourself out? You can find the door, yes?” His face disappears behind a large magnifying glass before I can answer. Without a word I leave the room and creep down the ramp, out the heavy door into the late afternoon light.

Back at the treehouse, I take the elevator as if I’m just returning home from an average day’s work. I want to wince at every clang and creak of the chain and the gears, but I stand straight and expressionless as the machinery bears me up through the trapdoor and into the dim entryway. I start for my room, but Lock and Barrel stand shoulder to shoulder in the hallway, blocking my way.

I wait in front of them for a moment, although I don’t expect them to let me pass. I know exactly what this is about, but I don’t want them to have the easy way out. I want to hear them say it.

They don’t speak. Barrel shifts his weight and stares at the floor; Lock fixes his eyes somewhere near my jawline.

Their unhappy expressions would have made the old version of me feel bad for them, the poor unfortunate messengers, helpless with their unenviable assignment. But this new version of me has no room for senseless, unjustified pity. I put my hands on my hips. “Yes?”

“He wants to see you,” says Lock. His voice is just above a whisper. He can’t seem to pull his gaze up to meet my eyes.

“Oh, He does?” I repeat. I glance down at Barrel who hastily looks back down to the floor.

“I _told_ you that you were gonna get it,” Lock hisses, leaning forward. “I _knew_ He’d find out. Why can’t you just fucking _listen_ to me?”

“Okay.” I turn around and start back toward the conference room. I can sense them behind me staring after me, feel the weight of their perplexed fear. I know they detect the change in me and cannot fathom what to make of it. I pull the mask down over my face, not to hide my fear, but to hide that I am not afraid.

I don’t know what to do with the empty place inside me where my fear should lie quaking. Without it, I don’t even feel real. I stand like a ghost just inside the door to the conference room. When He laughs, and evil sound reverberating from everywhere at once, the bass timbre buzzes through the hollow space inside me. I stare out at the glowing blacklit shapes rising out of the darkness like postapocalyptic ruins, and I wait.

His laugh escalates to a crazy fever pitch. “Well, don’t keep me waiting, little darlin,” He croons. “Come on in, why don’t you.”

I walk to the center of the room, stop in front of the roulette wheel.

“Seems like I’m always _waiting_ for you these days, don’t it?” His voice bounces around the room like a flitting bat: first hovering near the slot machine cowboys, then dancing over to the gears of the Catherine wheel, spiraling up into the dark of the high ceiling and skating back down to me on the hanging chains. The simple ventriloquism has been enough to petrify all of His trembling victims as the start of their conferences, but to me it is nothing more dangerous than a flashy magician’s cheap hat trick. The echoes of His voice fold in on themselves and center in on where He steps out of the shadows. He walks right up to me with a slow, sauntering gait. I have to crane my neck to see His face; He looms over me like a malevolent Buddha. “ _Nobody_ keeps Oogie Boogie _waiting_.”

A dozen saucy responses crop up in my head like tenacious weeds, but no appropriate answers come to mind. I keep my mouth shut.

He grabs my wrist and shoves me onto the roulette wheel. The floor sways gently under my feet as I clamber up. I almost stumble and I grab onto the table in the middle to catch myself. He laughs. “Oh, darlin, you can’t possibly start pussyin’ out on me already. We ain’t even got started yet.” 

I stand still and await instructions.

Something about my silence, or maybe the set of my shoulders, the insolent tilt of my chin, seems to fill Him with a rage so sudden He can no longer contain it. He rushes me like a mad bull, rips the mask off my face and throws it off into the dark. I should count myself lucky He took none of my face along with it. We stand there, Him heaving with angry breath, me as stock-still and expressionless as I have ever been in my life. He leans in so close I can feel His putrid breath. “Up on the table,” He growls. “ _Now_.”

I step back slowly, lean backward until the spikes on the table press against my dress, pull myself up inch by inch. I can feel the rage mount inside Him at my not-quite-defiance, swelling within His body and making Him appear even more massive than He is. When I’m lying on the table, I put my hands over my head before the order even comes, hold my wrists close together to await the ropes. He hesitates for a shadow of a moment at the shock of my easy compliance, then loops the rope around my wrist and affixes it to a spike above me. He grabs my ankles and yanks my legs apart as He ties them to their own spikes as well. The snake’s tongue flicks against my thigh as He leans in close, and He slowly brings His head up to narrow His eyes at me. “Oh, honey,” He growls. “I can smell sex all over you.”

A trill of panic rockets down my spine; my vision whites out for an instant. Even as I keep my face still as stone, I know He can hear the quickening of my breath.

He smiles so wide I can see the edges of wiggling centipedes all along His gumline. “You’re not adverse to a little friendly wager, are you? Nothing too big. Just a little game, really. Lord knows you’re doing plenty of playin’ around these days.” He doesn’t expect an answer. He grabs the hem of my dress in both hands and yanks in either direction. The fabric gives way like paper as it splits up the middle. He tosses the edges to either side and leaves me exposed as a dissected frog on a lab table. Everything in me screams to look away, but I force myself to meet His hungry eyes. He laughs.

“And now, let’s see what luck has all lined up for you, baby.” He pulls a pair of dice out and rattles them in His grasp. “You wanna blow on ‘em for a little good juju?” He shoves His hand in my face and shakes the dice against my cheek. I turn away. “Ohhh, denied! And here I thought you been blowin’ everything in a ten-mile radius.” He winds up and tosses the dice against me. They bounce off my naked arm and settle on the table beside me. I can’t stop myself from craning to see what they reveal.

“Lucky seven,” He says. “Coulda been worse.” He moves away. I can hear Him rummaging around outside my line of sight. He returns along with a rattling sound that could only be one thing: cages. I’m torn between wanting to look away and wanting to keep my eyes squeezed tight against whatever oncoming horror He has in store for me. Terrified curiosity wins out and I peek up at where He arranges three small cages at my feet. Unknown, dark shapes scuttle within. I shut my eyes again.

“Ooooh, these little lovelies already all riled up,” He says, almost to Himself. “All right, darlin. Did you get a good peek at the lineup here? You got yourself seven pretty little scorpions to play with.”

I open my eyes and look again. Scorpions, is that all? We handle scorpions all the time. Their stings are about as bothersome as a bee’s. I don’t understand his angle.

“Here you got three of your common forest scorpion. Of which you are already quite familiar.” He rattles one of the cages around, and the creatures inside knock around and hiss at the mistreatment. “You got three of the slightly rarer burrowing scorpion. I enjoyed the one you sent down just last week actually – delicious. And here,” His voice devolves into a growling chuckle and He needs a moment to collect Himself, “I got you an ultra-special, ultra-pissed, filled-to-the-gills-with-toxin, spiraltail scorpion.”

My heart trips over itself as it speeds up within me. I can’t help myself, a moan escapes my throat.

He laughs again. “Oh, honey, don’t you know it.” He leans His bulk over me, His arms planted on either side of my shoulders, and presses His body into mine. Just the promise of the upcoming violence has excited Him. He rolls His hips against me and pushes the wind out of me. “The odds are in your favor, sugar,” He whispers, His breath hot and rancid in my face. “That spiraltail is gonna go on the attack after a moving target, so maybe if you lie real still it won’t wanna get you.” He trails His tongue across my jawline, and I’m unable to suppress the shudder that erupts out of me. He laughs. “Not doing so hot there on the lying still, though, are we?” He straightens up again and moves toward the cages. I can hear His low giggle as He unhooks each latch and pulls open the small doors on creaking hinges. I can feel rather than hear the metallic scuttle of tiny legs vibrating across the table toward me. The urge to thrash and scream washes over me like water, but I freeze in place.

His laugh rolls up from all sides, His ventriloquist’s trick succeeding this time in adding to my fear. “Maybe you shoulda kept your eyes open,” He says. “You could track where those little motherfuckers went.”

I open my eyes in time to see Him grasp one of the table’s spikes and give the whole thing a spin. The scorpions let out angry little hisses from all around me.   One of them scurries directly past my face, casting a larger-than-life shadow under the neon lights. I stare up at the dark ceiling spiraling around and try to pretend I am not there – no beating heart, no body heat, no ribcage rising and falling with my panicked breaths. A smooth exoskeleton brushes past my calf and I can’t help it, my skin itself flinches away on its own accord. The stinger jabs twice before I register the pain. I cry out, and next to my shoulder another one of the creatures startles at my sudden sound, plunges its stinger into my clavicle. The more I will myself to be still, the more my lungs seem to hyperventilate. One crawls across my navel and pauses there, then continues to the other side without attacking. I can feel at least one taking refuge under my side, in the folds of my torn dress.

His face looms over me, spinning slower and slower as the table loses momentum. His mouth is wide in leering laughter. “Good lord, child, I’m glad I didn’t put money on this dogfight! We barely even got started!” He reaches out and snags a spike, dragging the table to an abrupt stop. All the scorpions stumble and hiss. A stinging pang hits my outer thigh, then another on the side of my ribs. I press my lips together against the screams. He doubles over with laughter.

The creatures slowly regain their footing and a few more attempt to burrow beneath the fabric of my dress. “Oh no you don’t, you little bastards,” He snaps as He yanks the dress out from under me like a magician performing the tablecloth trick. It rips from its last connections under my arms, leaving rugburn on my skin that I scarcely even feel. One scorpion attempts to scurry under the small of my back, fails to fit there, and stings me indignantly. Another slowly scales my inner thigh and perches atop my pelvic bone as if surveying the real estate there. I squint down at it as well as I can through my tear-dotted lashes. If I could get a better look, maybe I could identify if that one is the spiraltail or one of the less-venomous species. If I knew for sure, one good thrash might buck it off to the floor; it might anger the other six, but I could withstand their stings. I realize with a shiver of terror that I’ve been trusting His word that only one of the seven is a spiraltail. Maybe there are more. Maybe all seven are. His bets are always rigged; the house always wins. My head throbs, my whole body is burning. A sob escapes my throat. The scorpion on top of me plunges its stinger into my pelvis swift as a fencer. I flinch and feel answering sting in my cheek just below my eye. The levee breaks and the screams finally erupt out of me, one after another, tearing my throat raw as I strain against the ropes.

He leans in close to my face and grins in wordless triumph. He snags the nearest scorpion and pops it into His mouth, crunches it grotesquely. Part of a leg drips out of His mouth and falls into my hair. I can’t stop screaming. Even when He brushes the remaining scorpions off the table and onto the floor, I can’t stop.

“Oh, little darlin,” He croons, “what a tangled web we weave.” As if to illustrate his point, a spider crawls off His head and drops on a glowing blacklit dragline down to my chest. It traverses the burning skin of my naked torso slowly, as if wary of the toxicity beneath its feet. At last it scuttles away in a burst of spooked haste.

He leans the whole weight of His body over mine and holds my face in His hands. The pressure, the immobility grounds me and silences my sobs, but does nothing to de-escalate my terror. He is still laughing, but silently now; I can feel the giggles shaking Him against me. He waits, watching me, grinning crazily, until it is clear I’m not about to start screaming again. Then He flicks out his tongue to lick against the throbbing wound under my eye. “Look at you,” He hisses. “You’re so delicious when you’re terrified.” He shifts His hips and presses His huge erection harder against me, then He pushes His way down to examine the stings elsewhere all over me. I can’t differentiate between all the burning, itching wounds from each other, but based on where He licks and caresses me, I’ve been stung at least eleven times. I stop counting long before He has finished. The odds were never with me.

He tastes the first sting on my calf, then drops to His knees between my legs. I feel the ropes around my ankles loosen, then I feel His hands clamp down on my thighs hard as vices and yank my legs further apart, hoisting my knees up over His shoulders. “Lord, look how they stung you right in your sweet little pussy.” His breath between my legs makes the already throbbing sting site flare up with burning pain. “Couldn’a been eviler if I fucking trained ‘em by hand. Lord, lord.” First His tongue traces against the wound, then He greedily presses His whole mouth up between my legs. Every wriggling insect within his mouth squirms against my burning skin. He moans when he comes up for air. “Christ Al _mighty_ , you taste so good poisoned.”

His voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. I can barely hear Him over the pounding in my head. My eye is swollen almost shut from the sting on my cheek, and the vision in my other eye is obscured with blurry smears of shifting fog. My heartbeat feels like it is an enormous effort, like the blood is congealing within my veins like curdling milk. Is this just the aftereffects of the mind-rending terror? Or am I actually dying? I turn my head to one side and listen to the symphony of throbbing blood in my aching temples.

He pulls His face away, but the snake tongue lingers, trailing the barest tips of its fangs along the skin of my cunt and down my thigh – not deep enough to inject its venom, just grazing the acidic tips along my top layer of skin like a vindictive cat stretching its claws. The scratches blend in with the cacophony of pain all over my body; my overloaded nerves cannot process any more of this agonizing information. The fog in my vision thickens and I close my eyes gratefully.

“Oh no, you ain’t going nowhere,” He snarls. He rises to His feet and grabs me around the waist, flips me over on my belly. With my hands still tied above my head my face presses into the cold metal of the table; my neck is too swollen from the sting to move to the other side. He hauls me up on my knees, and I feel the head of His cock rub against my sting-inflamed pussy before He shoves it in. I shrink away from Him involuntarily, and He grabs my hips to push me deeper against Him. The length and girth of His huge cock feels like it is splitting me apart; the sandpapery friction of the burlap tears at me inside and out. Tears flow from my good eye and dribble weakly from the bad one.

“You are mine,” He hisses against my shoulder blade, punctuating every other word with a thrust so hard it rattles my bones. “You belong. To _me_. You will. Always. Belong. To _me_.”

I feel like He is fucking my brain right out of my skull; I feel like I am floating above the table and watching Him ravage my poor wasted shell of a body. I realize I’m delirious, I am feverish, I need to get back to my room and my collection of first aid supplies. He keeps up His relentless, rending thrusts long after His words have disintegrated into animalistic growls. I know He is close. Finally He comes, thrusting so sharply He pushes us both forward across the table. My face scrapes against the surface, and the swollen sting-site feels like it is ripping apart against the metal. I can feel His rotten seed burning sickly inside me. All my muscles tremble under the pressure of holding still until He releases me.

He slowly catches His breath, still pinning my hips up against His even as His cock shrinks inside me. Something crawls across the back of my neck – something longer than a spider, smaller than a centipede, possibly an earwig. He leans His head against my back, breathing hot and moist air onto my skin as he speaks. “Don’t you run around on me. This ain’t even close to the worst I can cook up for you.” He pauses, inhales deeply. “You just remember where you belong.”

As if from under a roiling tide, a thought struggles to the surface. _But I don’t belong here_. I bite my lip and say nothing.

At last he pulls away from me and slides out. The weight of His softening cock drags out a splatter of come that slides down my thighs, burning my skin where it drips. He takes His time lumbering around to the head of the table to untie my wrists. I stare down at my hands, at the skin glowing green under the blacklight, at the dark ring of blood on my wrists making sinister bracelets. I never even noticed that happen. Behind me I can hear Him collecting the empty scorpion cages. “You go to bed now,” He calls to me, so casual it is surreal. “You be a good kitten.”

“Yes, sir." 

He laughs at my words, at the slurring sound my thickened tongue produces. When I slip off the table and crumple to the floor, He laughs again. It takes all my strength to pull myself to my feet and walk in some semblance of a straight line out of the room, but I do my best. The whole way, He laughs. 

For the entire distance back to my room, I clutch the wall like a lifeline, leaving dusty and uneven trails in my staggering wake. My lungs can’t seem to draw in enough air, my leg muscles feel like melting sap, everything hurts. I stop three times to vomit, searing heaves that leave me half unconscious. Where are my brothers? Were they not listening to my punishment? Don’t they want to offer any help? Even just a steady arm to lean on, a nonthreatening presence to scatter the shadows away? But everything is silent and all the doors are closed. I stumble at last into my room.

The bed looks so inviting, the rumpled sheets like a nest in the spill of moonlight from the window. I force myself away from the seducing sight with a lump in my throat, and I drop to my knees in front of the shelves. As I rummage through my supplies, dull fear mounts inside me: I have nothing at the ready to counteract this particular scorpion toxin. I have never prepared for this contingency. The snake antivenin will have to do. I stab the syringe into the little glass vial and draw out what I hope is the correct amount – the tiny measuring marks swim and converge in my bleary vision. My shaking hands fumble the vial. It hits the floor and splinters into numberless shards. The precious antidote seeps into the warped wooden planks. I have to turn away and vomit again before I can assess the damage. Though the vial shattered, the syringe survived the fall and remains intact, with the medicine still safely inside. It is all that I have, so it will have to be enough. I steady my arm and jab the needle into the muscle of my thigh, push in the plunger with both thumbs. The antidote burns as bad as the venom ever did. I lean my head in my hands for a moment, hoping the strength I need will gather by itself. I can feel another wave of nausea coming on, and before it overtakes me I dig through the herbs and pull out the dried ginkgo leaves. I splatter them with oil and press them on every sting site I can locate and reach, secure them with bandages, hope they will draw out any of the lingering poison. I am just finishing tying a strip of bandage around my face when the vomiting wins out, and I barely have enough time to turn away before the retching takes hold.

Afterward, lying on the floor next to broken glass and the stinking puddle of my own sick, I pine for the bed but know I could never make it that far. The warmth of unconsciousness is every bit as comforting as downy pillows and moonlit sheets, though. I use the last ounce of energy left in my body to heave a regretful sigh as the heavy darkness swallows me up.

 


	5. Chapter 5

_She’s not breathing!_

_She is, stupid. She’s breathing._

I’m not. I can’t be. I roll over and curl myself away from the voices so I can be dead in peace.

_I told you so._

_Ugh, she’s got puke in her hair. We can’t put her in the bed like this._

_What do you suggest? A fucking bubble bath? Maybe a pedicure while we’re at it?_

_Shut up._

_You shut up._

I give up on the last shreds of hope that they might leave me alone. “You both can shut up.” I drag myself to a sitting position and push the mop of vomit-dampened hair out of my face. Lock and Barrel’s gawping expressions come into bleary half-focus before my eyes. Lock clutches my mask in front of him. He must have retrieved it when they preformed the standard post-conference cleanup this morning. He hurriedly places it on top of the nearest shelf.

I realize I am still naked and I cross my arms over my chest, fold my knees up. Every movement rakes my muscles over fresh coals of agony. I don’t have the energy for true embarrassment, but I keep up the appearance. “You want to throw me a blanket or something, at least?”

Barrel springs away at the command like it was shot at him from a crossbow, hurries over to the bed to yank off the quilt. Lock just stands and stares at me. I don’t know if it’s my warped and thickened voice, unfamiliar as a stroke victim’s, or my collection of blistering sting marks that freezes him where he stands. He watches Barrel drape the quilt over me without making a move to help, without looking away.

“Thank you,” I say sweetly, pointedly, to Barrel while staring Lock straight in the face. Lock flinches and looks down at the ground. I can’t sit through his I’m sorry, his I told you so, his questioning pleas to recount the horrors I narrowly survived. I lower myself back down onto the floor. Glass shards crunch like eggshells beneath the quilt.

“Hey, at least get in the bed,” Lock wheedles.

I pull the quilt over my head. Everything hurts. I can still feel the last of the poison sluicing its way through my aching arteries. “Fuck off.”

I’m surprised that they actually do fuck off and leave me there on the floor – surprised, and a little sad. Maybe I don’t want their sympathy, but it might be a comfort to not be alone right now. Naked and poisoned, falling asleep on a bed of shattered glass. As my self-pity bottoms out I snort at my own ridiculousness. _Poor Shock. Poor little helpless thing_.

No.

I stand up.

The mask has a streaked scuff mark from where He flung it across the conference room floor. It lines up just right with the wound on my cheek beneath. I slip it on. I dress myself like donning armor for battle, and I set out for the doctor’s lab.

Outside it is midafternoon, everything bathed in pale light. The shapes of the town all around me look washed out and ephemeral as a mirage. I walk slowly, keeping a gentle and steady time with my steps. In spite of my best efforts I know I must look utterly intoxicated, staggering shamefully home after a night of drunken revelry. How oddly close to the truth that assumption would be, and how incredibly far. I drag myself to the lab door and lean on the bell.

There is no telltale whir of wheelchair gears before the door creaks open. Igor, the halfwit assistant, stands there looking at me with an expression of bovine stupidity. I wait, but he says nothing. “I’m here to see the doctor,” I announce. The waste of time grates on me like bone rubbing against bone.

Igor grunts and turns away. “Right this way.” His voice is as uneven and slow as his hobbling, hunched movements. It is just as well; after the long walk into town my entire aching body feels ready to collapse if I push it any harder. I follow him up the ramp to the second floor lab, my quickened pulse drumming knives of pain through my temples with every slow step.

Upstairs, the doctor sits at a drafting table, pages of complicated blueprints spread before him. The clown’s prosthetic limb is nowhere in sight. Igor clears his throat. “Master,” he announces in a drawn-out whine, “a visitor.”

The doctor takes a long moment before glancing away from his work, to be sure I am aware of how low I sit on the totem pole of his priorities. “Thank you, Igor.” His voice is measured and neutral as a polite computer. “You may go.” He returns to his blueprints.

Igor shuffles away. I stand still and listen to his laboring progress back down the ramp until his footsteps fade away. Finally the doctor flips off the light above the drafting table and rolls his chair over to the door without acknowledging me, without even glancing in my direction. He swings the lab door closed and clicks the deadbolt. Then at last he turns to face me.

For a long, awkward stretch of silence, he says nothing. I match him steely stare for stare, my body frozen and impassive, but I wish he would hurry this along. My legs tremble; my knees threaten to buckle. The throbbing in my head is so loud I fear I won’t be able to hear his words when he finally does speak. I swallow against the nausea that begins its gradual creep up my throat again.

“I would like to accept your proposition,” he says.

My vision swims with relief.

“But,” he continues, “my acceptance is conditional.”

Of course it is. Of course. I cross my arms in front of me to hide their shaking. “And what are your conditions, then?”

He breaks eye contact and steers his chair slowly toward the other side of the room, the part set up less like an inventor’s paradise and more like a medical torture chamber. I know he expects me to follow him, but I have no interest in coming any closer to that sinister array of exam tables, stirrups, instruments of unknown and sadistic intent. He stops next to one of the exam tables and looks back at me. “My conditions are very simple. All I need is for you to submit to a medical examination.”

I take a step back and bump into the table behind me, and a stand of glass beakers rattles like wind chimes. “What? No.”

“If you honestly expect me to become an accomplice in whatever malicious scheme you’re concocting, I shall need irrefutable evidence of his wrongdoing. You can’t expect me to provide you the means to do harm to an innocent.”

A laugh barks out of me at that word. “You can’t be serious. You yourself have treated the people He's hurt.”

“I don’t pass judgment on mob business. What happens out in the Underground is none of my concern. I treat all patients impartially, and I have taken an oath to first and foremost _do no harm_.”

The longer he talks, the weaker my legs become. I lean my full weight back against the table behind me as discreetly as I can.

“However, if his activities extend beyond the scope of gambling debt collection, especially where there are children involved, that would most certainly alter the ethical landscape for me.”

 _Children_. Nobody calls us that. We are Oogie’s boys, hooligans, masked thugs. Creatures who are to blame for their own misfortune. Beasts who deserve their fate. I catch a glimpse of his view of us without the shackles of those weighty connotations, and I suddenly feel a glimmer of the anger on our behalf he is hinting toward. “Can’t you just take my word for it?” I reach behind me and prop my elbows on the edge of the table to hold myself upright.

He gives me just the edge of a smile. “I’m a scientist, my dear. For an undertaking a serious as what you’re asking, I shall need empirical evidence.”

My head swims. I should just give in. What does it matter? Just one indignity as a sacrifice to escape future horrors. If I don’t whore myself out here and now, I’ll end up His whore for the rest of my days. I take a wobbly step forward and begin unbuttoning my dress. “How do you want me?”

He wrinkles his nose. “When I say _medical examination_ , that is my literal meaning. That wasn’t innuendo. There’s a gown on the table. I’ll step out while you change.” Without waiting for me to reply, he turns and pilots his chair out of the room.

I change quickly, less out of fear and more to hurry along the chance to sit down at last. The gown is huge on me. I wrap it around myself, feeling ridiculous as a toddler playing dress-up. I sit on the exam table and wait. He seems to think it takes me an enormous length of time to change out of a dress. By the time he returns, I’m curled on my side on the table’s paper lining, half asleep.

The whir of the chair’s approach blends into my waking dream. I open my eyes and watch his brisk, professional movements as he strips off his rubber work gloves and scrubs his hands in the small sink. He pulls on a pair of sterile latex gloves in their place and carefully arranges a tray of gleaming chrome instruments. He picks up a silver speculum and I draw my knees up tighter.

He glances at me becoming smaller and smaller on the exam table, then goes back to arranging his equipment. “Naturally, I appear suspicious to you. I can understand that.” His conversational tone and spot-on assessment of my thoughts confuse me. “You’re probably thinking I am manipulating you into nonconsensual sex under the duplicitous guise of medical concern. That’s a natural reaction from someone with your alleged background.”

The emphasis on _alleged_ slaps across me like a physical blow, but I remain wary. For all I know it’s a tactic to trick me into volunteering more information than I intend to. I keep my mouth shut.

“You realize that I completed my residency in gynecology, don’t you?” He gestures to a framed diploma on the wall matted in red and black. “I practiced gynecology for years before branching out as a prosthetist and finally into biomedical engineering. I am highly, _highly_ qualified for this.” He looks at me expectantly. When I don’t respond, he puts the tray of equipment aside and sighs. “I suppose that given the incident that occurred between us yesterday, you may be having a difficult time believing that not _everybody_ is constantly on the lookout for ways to use others’ weaknesses to their own advantage.”

I don’t understand what he wants from me. An apology, an admission of guilt? Tears and groveling? More praise? I’m already up on his table, naked under his gown. What more could I possibly give him? I uncurl myself and turn onto my back.

He seems to accept this in the spirit in which I’ve offered it, as tacit consent. He smiles briefly. “All right. We will start with a basic physical exam. Very simple. If you don’t mind to please remove your mask, that would be helpful.”

I hesitate, then I pull the mask off my face and clutch it to my chest like a shield. His eyebrows arch above his dark glasses at the sight of the swollen, bruised sting. He peers a little closer, rolls up to the head of the table and touches the outer boundaries of the swelling with cool, quick fingers. “You’ve had an encounter with something venomous. Not a snakebite though, surely? The mark is all wrong.”

I part the gown like opening a stage curtain. His sharp inhale is subtle, but it gives me the same dark satisfaction as if he’d cried out and clutched at pearls. “Scorpion,” I mumble.

The clear confusion on his face is even more gratifying than his initial reaction. “A _forest_ scorpion? Are you allergic? Their venom is incredibly mild, you usually don’t see reactions quite this – ”

“No.” I push the gown lower so he can see the marks all at once. “Spiraltail.”

For a moment he goes completely still, then his face clouds with an anger I didn’t know he had in him. “Spiraltails aren’t even native to this area. To anywhere _near_ this area. Those are an aggressively invasive species.” He rolls over to a cabinet and pulls out a few glass bottles, banging them together as he yanks them out. “It is _incredibly_ irresponsible to treat the ecology of this area so flippantly. Does he _really_ think he can bring in just any exotic species he likes for his own ridiculous, deviant purposes? What is he going to do when these creatures start crossbreeding with the native fauna? Does he even stop to think how that is going to impact the local ecosystem? Good lord, what other insane beasts does he have stashed away in his miserable little dungeon? He doesn’t even stop to think.” The whole time he rants, he dabs liquid from the bottles onto squares of gauze and presses it to my wounds. The cold stinging is almost a comfort up against the hot ache still burning under my skin. I lie still and listen to his tirade as he administers the medicine. He seems more offended by the illicit possession of nonnative scorpions than he seemed at the violence against me and my brothers. I would find this funny if it weren’t so baffling.

The doctor caps the bottle and sighs. “You’ve already treated the stings yourself, have you?”

I nod.

“Well, that was wise. Honestly, this kind of attack could have been lethal. What did you put on them? It’s done a remarkable job. I don’t know how you had access to the proper antivenin, but lucky for you that you did.”

“I didn’t…I only…I just used the snakebite medicine I made.” I shift uncomfortably under his eyes and wish I hadn’t spoken.

“That you _made_?”

“I mean…” I can feel the heat rising into my cheeks. “It’s really just ginkgo leaves. A little turmeric root as an anti-inflammatory. And feverfew and evening primrose for the anticoagulants.” I bite my tongue to keep myself from rambling further.

He snorts. “Well, aren’t you a little botanical prodigy. Although I suppose necessity _is_ the mother of invention.” He brushes the hair off my face with a gesture that might have been affectionate if his touch weren’t so cold and clinical, and he looks again at the mark on my cheek. “I’m sure the toxin hasn’t quite left your system, judging by your slurred speech and slow gait. I can give you something that will help ease the discomfort. And now.” He moves the edges of the gown away from me and glances across my naked torso, and his voice shifts into a clipped, robotic cadence, as if someone is taking his dictation. “Aside from the attack by venomous scorpion, you also present with contusions around the waist and upper thigh region consistent with assault. You have friction abrasions on both wrists and ankles indicative of a struggle involving rope restraints. Feet in the stirrups, please.” He ties a facemask over his mouth and nose.

I inch myself lower on the table and shakily lift each foot to rest in the cold metal stirrups. Then I cover my face with my hands and do my best to avoid hyperventilating.

“It’s all right,” he says in a voice so suddenly gentle he sounds like a different person. “You’re doing fine, just fine.” Then he clears his throat and switches back to his textbook-dry narration. “Your pelvic exam presents with further friction burns in the inner thigh area, along with what appears to be mild chemical irritation, presumably from a corrosive liquid. Although the scorpion sting in the right labia majora does obscure the visual assessment somewhat, it’s clear from the bruising, swelling, and tearing that you have been subjected to forced vaginal penetration. Additionally, there are twin lacerations that start at the clitoral hood and continue down the inner thigh, which appear to involve some measure of venom as well. I would guess these are scratches from the prosthoglyphous fangs of a venomous snake.   Although it didn’t appear to strike to kill, as the scorpions obviously did.” He pauses, and I peek from behind my hands at his face. Under the facemask I can’t read his expression at all. “I am going to perform a simple, minimally invasive swab to check you for the presence of any infection, virus, or abnormal cellular growth. I am inserting the speculum. This will not hurt.” Icy metal slides into my cunt. I cover my face with my hands again. “The swabs may be momentarily uncomfortable,” he continues, “but again, there should be no pain.” I don’t trust his assurance, and I’m surprised when momentary discomfort is all he delivers. I still hold my breath until he withdraws the speculum and tells me I can sit up again.

I pull the gown tight around me and stare at the floor. It doesn’t make sense that a medical exam could leave me feeling more vulnerable than His most painful assault ever did. My breathing becomes shallower and faster until the tears spill out, unstoppable as nightfall. The doctor hands me a box of tissues and then does not acknowledge my crying again.

He rolls around the workspace in silence for a few minutes, putting items away, prepping the samples for processing. He flips off the light above the stirrups and turns back to me. “It is my professional opinion that your plan is ethically sound. Your assailant poses as a clear, present, and chronic danger to you, the other members of your household, and the community at large. If our judicial system were capable of removing and disposing of him, I would involve the authorities. However, given his overreaching grasp into law enforcement corruption, that would prove ineffective and dangerous for us both. Vigilante justice it is.” He smiles at me, a warm and conspiratorial look that sends a single thrum of fear and excitement down my spine. He’s really going to help me. This is really going to happen. I manage a weak smile back.

As quickly as his smile appeared, it is gone again and his face is distracted, his brain spinning miles away. “This will take a bit of time to develop, but rest assured it will be at the forefront of my priority list. I do understand time is of the essence in this situation.”

“Thank you,” I murmur.

He waves a hand vaguely at me and sets the chair in motion toward the door. “Nonsense. I should be thanking _you_ for alerting me to the urgent need for this pest control. You may get dressed again and see yourself out. I will keep in touch regarding the status of this project’s development.” He stops and glances back over his shoulder. “And thank you for agreeing to my conditions. There is a bag with a few things for you on that countertop. Please, do be safe.”

I nod, and then he is gone.

It’s a relief to be back in my own clothes after the ill-fitting swaths of fabric. I slide woozily off the exam table and peer into the paper bag on the countertop. More glass bottles, each with labels scrawled across their fronts in his slanted, wavering handwriting. Antiseptic ointment. Antivenin. A small brown bottle labeled _Helleborus Rosa extract. For pain relief. Do not exceed one teaspoon per 24 hour period_. I tuck the bag under my arm and begin the long walk home.

 


	6. Chapter 6

The lights from the distant bonfires flicker like sunlight on water. From where we sit in the abandoned pumpkin patch, we can just barely hear the drunken carousing. Barrel overturns his pillowcase and dumps out a mountain of candy. He passes me a lollipop, which I pocket without even looking at. Barrel doesn’t notice. “What a haul!” he exclaims, sifting through his pile.

“What a haul,” Lock echoes. He spreads out his own spoils on the ground before us: stacks of wallets and watches, handfuls of jewelry of dubious value. He picks up a purple leather billfold and opens it up, pulls out hundreds of dollars in large bills and the Mayor’s ID. He snickers.

“Dang,” Barrel says around a mouthful of jawbreakers. “Where’d you get the balls to lift that one?”

“It was nothing,” says Lock. He stuffs the ID back into the billfold and sets the cash aside. “His ass is so big he’d never notice. I was like a fly on a hippo.” He tosses the billfold aside and reaches for the next wallet.

 I lean back against the pumpkin behind me and stare up at the sky, at the lazy ghosts that drift past heedless as low-flying clouds. “This Halloween sucked.”

“Are you stupid? Do you _see_ all this candy?” exclaims Barrel.

 “Like you did anything to help us anyway,” sneers Lock. He unloads another wallet of money. Out falls a wrapped condom, which he throws at Barrel. “Here you go, for the next time you wanna fuck the bathtub drain.”

“Bite me, buttface.” He throws it back, but Lock brushes it away in midair with an effortless flick of his tail. Barrel flings a handful of candy corn at him, then Lock pounces on him like a cat and they roll down the side of the hill, giggling as they wrestle and spar. I watch the drifting ghosts and listen to the boys’ laughter and punches until they stagger back up to where I sit. Smashed pieces of candy corn stick to Lock’s chest. Barrel picks one off and pops it into his mouth.

“You’re right, though,” Lock says, panting slightly. “Boring-ass Halloween show. Stupid parade, awful food, and that embarrassment of a grand finale. It sucked.”

“They ought to put us in charge,” says Barrel. “They want someone to light some shit on fire and dump it into the fountain? I could do a way better job.” He has a slightly hysterical gleam in his eyes from the sugar rush.

“Well, lucky for us, we’re the only ones who weren’t creaming our pants over the festivities,” says Lock. He picks up a glittery rhinestone bracelet and puts it on my head like a tiara. “These assholes are easy pickings.”

“Easy,” I mumble. He’s right that I wasn’t much help, trailing behind Barrel as he played up the innocent little trick-or-treater act and collected candy. No assistance whatsoever in distracting the crowd while Lock meandered around lifting wallets and valuables. I was too caught up in the thrall of Jack Skellington’s fiery Pumpkin King act, the way he rose in flames from the lifeless effigy and spiraled in sensual arabesques before plunging beneath the fountain’s surface and emerging reborn. How I wanted him to cover me in licking flames and bury me with him under the water. I close my eyes. I can’t deal with this sober. “You guys want a smoke?” I ask as I dig around in my pocket for a joint and a match.

“A smoke of _what_?” Lock leans in and peers into my hand. “Is that nightshade? Gross.”

“You’re better off huffing solvent,” Barrel observes as he gnaws on a fat rope of black licorice. “That shit’ll burn out your brain cells.”

“That shit’ll fuck with your academic skills,” sneers Lock.

“That shit’ll reduce sexual sensitivity,” says Barrel, then gives a little choke on his bite of candy. Time freezes for just the barest of moments as we all silently contemplate an existence of total sexual insensitivity. Then Barrel tears off another chunk of licorice with his teeth like a coyote ripping off a struggling rabbit’s head. “ _Anyway._ Don’t they use nightshade in chemical lobotomy procedures?”

“Yeah,” says Lock. “And for general anesthesia.”

“Last time I tried smoking it,” says Barrel, “it felt like someone stuck my brain in the freezer.”

“Naw, you gotta _have_ a brain to experience that sensation.”

“Suck my dick.”

“Let me know when you grow one, dude.”

Duly dissuaded, I put the joint back in my pocket. My lips itch to purse around its papery fatness and suck down lungful after lungful of numbing smoke, but I will have to wait. “Since when did you two numbnuts get so straightedge on me?”

Lock starts laughing. “Whatever, I’m just not in the habit of lighting up every plant in the fucking graveyard. Look.” He reaches into the bottom of his pile of pickpocketing prizes and pulls out a large silver flask. “This is a more sensible poison, don’t you think?”

I take it out of his hand. It’s beautiful, carved with intricate detail, lovingly polished. It feels almost completely full. I unscrew the cap and waft the smell into my nose. It is sharply alcoholic and vaguely sweet. “I think it’s wormswart whiskey. You want a taste?” I hold it out to Lock.

He looks at the flask, then back at me. “You first.”

“Seriously? Goddamn, will you fucking grow a pair already.” I tip it back and take a deep swig. I have lost all fear of consuming questionable substances. What worse could there be than what I have already survived? “It’s wormswart whiskey. And it’s much nicer than the swill you brought home that one time. This goes down smooth as satin.” I take another gulp. It burns its way all down my insides. I don’t want to give it up, but I pass it off to his outstretched hand.

Two passes later, I am already lightheaded. By the time the flask’s last drop disappears down Lock’s throat, I am undoubtedly intoxicated and doing my best to hide this fact from my brothers. We lie in a heap against the pumpkin, Lock’s head on my shoulder, Barrel with his upper half on Lock’s lap and his lower half on mine.

Lock traces one clumsy finger along the crusty, healing scab around my wrist. It makes it feel all itchy, and I shake his hand away. “You’ve changed, you know,” he says.

I know he meant that as a simple observation, but I can’t stop myself from taking it as an attack. “I have not.”

He tries to twist himself to look me in the eye, fails, and lets himself fall heavily against me. “But you have. You’re different. And He knows it too.”

Barrel looks, sticky-faced, up at Lock. “Maybe it’s puberty. That’s supposed to make girls all surly.”

“Ew,” I exclaim. “No. Shut up.”

Barrel laughs. “You don’t like that word, huh. Puberty. _Puberty_.”

I try to kick him off, but he is too heavy against my leaden legs. Lock whines in protest of my jostling movements and tries to nuzzle his head deeper onto my shoulder. I know his touch is innocent and harmless, but the contact sends my brain whirling down into memories of slinking exoskeletons burrowing under my trapped body. I can’t be here any longer. I squirm my way out from under them and stand on wobbly legs as the ground pitches beneath me. “Let’s get out of here.”

They stare up at me with blank, unfocused eyes.

“Come on.” I prod at them with my foot, none too gently. “There’s got to be some interesting shit going down somewhere. It’s the one night we could get away with anything. Why spend it getting wasted alone in a pumpkin patch?”

My pep talk doesn’t rouse them much, but they haul themselves upright and start with me back into town. Barrel tries to link his arm with mine, but I shrink away from his touch. He stumbles along on his own for a while, somehow more affected by the whiskey than Lock or me, before Lock grabs his arm instead and they stumble slightly more gracefully together. I keep my hand in my pockets, fingering the nightshade joint like I’m secretly stroking my lover under the table.

The town square around the fountain is alive with music and laughter and a gleeful, block-party atmosphere. The younger kids run around screaming and giggling, bags of candy flapping against their arms, plastic vampire teeth clutched in their drooling mouths. One kid runs directly into me, bounces off, and ricochets in the opposite direction without even slowing down his squealing progress. I look after him with revolted wonder. Was I ever that young? Did I ever have that kind of fun? I can only remember my giggling being sadistic, my screaming only in terror and pain. I walk faster.

The undead corpse child waddles up to us, grinning maniacally. “You guys want a caramel apple?” he chirps, waving one around.

“Fuck no,” says Lock, just as Barrel exclaims, “Fuck yes!”

The boy hands it to Barrel. Lock tries to snatch it away. “You can’t eat that,” Lock snaps.

“Watch me.”

I glance at the corpse child from where he has waddled back off a few paces and now stares at Barrel with an expression of explosive excitement. “You need to check that apple for shrapnel,” I tell him. “That kid is about to piss himself." 

Barrel gives me the finger with his free hand and takes an enormous bite. He chews exactly once, then spits the mouthful onto the ground. “The hell is this?”

Lock plucks the stick out of his hand and holds up to his face. “I think it’s toothpaste.”

The corpse child doubles over in laughter as far as his girth will allow. “Aw man, did you see that!” he screams to the kid next to him. They try a high five, miss, land it on the second attempt. “He totally took a bite!”

“Hell yeah!” screams his friend.

“That’s one of Oogie’s boys, I totally just tricked Oogie’s boys!” They chest bump and knock each other to the ground.

Lock rubs his eyes. “Oh, you stupid dick-for-brains. You’re gonna injure our street cred.”

Barrel just spits on the cobblestones a few more times.

I take the apple from Lock to get a closer look. The kids really did hide a layer of toothpaste between the apple and the caramel. Such a tedious task for such a pathetic payout. It’s almost charming. “There could have been glass shards in here, Barrel. There could have been rat poison.” The list of possible calamities is infinite. I toss the apple into the nearest bonfire.

Barrel wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugs. “I really like caramel apples,” he says, as if this somehow excuses it.

Lock and I exchange exasperated looks but make no reply to this. “We gotta get out of here,” Lock mumbles. “I robbed like half these assholes earlier.” He drapes one arm across Barrel’s shoulders and steers him down the path away from the celebrating crowd and toward the dark streets of the Underground.

The streetlamps seem to deliberately flicker as we pass beneath them, as if our presence disrupts the flow of their electricity. We pass the familiar milestones: the dry cleaning business set up as a front for a money laundering ring; the deli that never actually does any business but always has meat sides hanging on hooks in the window like a horror movie; the barber shop where they offer a shave and a haircut out front and bootleg liquor in the back. We walk past the hourly rate motel and a cluster of ancient hookers catcalls us as we pass by. Their laughter and throaty coughs ring in my ears long after we’ve rounded the corner.

We approach the unmarked door where we collected the ill-fated clown, where we’ve collected so many of His victims over the years. We pass by the door with heads down, eyes ahead, pace quickened. For all we know He is in there now, holding court around a hand of cards and a pile of chips, drumming up more deals, taking more bets, securing these souls for his collection in some hazy future. The low hum of activity behind the door seems as charged as the air before a hurricane, and I’m suddenly certain He really is there. I wonder if He senses us pass by. We all breathe again when we have crossed the street to the next block.

The first club on the corner spills blue light and a throbbing bass beat out of its open door. We slow and stop in front of the velvet ropes and peer inside at the silhouetted bodies moving in the darkness within. The bouncer, an overgrown and bored-looking wolfman, crosses his arms over his chest and glowers down at us with a cocked eyebrow. Lock glances at me and I shrug. Barrel and I fall slightly behind him as he slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out one of the bills from the Mayor’s wallet. He flashes it briefly. The bouncer looks away and reaches out. The bill melts from Lock’s hand to the bouncers and then disappears. We duck under the ropes and into the thundering music inside.

On the dance floor, shadowy bodies drift together and apart in time with the beat. We drift toward the crowded bar area, under no illusions that any bartender would serve us. We walk past the bar and through the arched passageway into the next room, where clusters of people hover around pool tables and dartboards. Away from the blue lights around the bar and the dance floor, the static shadows make me feel drunk all over again. I slide onto the white leather loveseat against the wall with Barrel close behind me. But Lock saunters right up to the group at the middle table where a cluster of green-skinned goblins seems to be between games, leaning against the table and drinking. They all stop and stare when he approaches them. He picks up a pool cue off the side of the table. “You guys wanna play?” he asks, grinning up at them with the open, guileless expression of a stupid little boy.

The goblins all laugh. “Get lost, kid,” says one.

“Come on,” Lock prods. “I’m really good.” He tosses the cue from one hand to the other with a flourish, then drops it on the floor. All around him the goblins erupt in raucous laughter like a murder of crows.

“Okay, okay,” says one of them, giving his friends a look. “I’ll play you. But we’re going to make it interesting, put a little money on it." 

Lock looks doubtful and slightly worried, then puffs himself up and gives a serious nod. The goblins’ greedy leers broaden and they begin racking the balls on the table.

One of the others pulls a few beers out of their bucket of ice, pops the caps and hands one to Lock. “Here you go, kid – pool’s a thirsty game, you know.”

Lock takes the bottle. “Thanks.” He drinks, makes a quick face of disgust, then coughs to hide it. The goblins all snicker and jostle each other at their deviousness.

The one with the beer bucket comes over to where Barrel and I sit, and he hands us each a bottle with a smarmy smile. I watch his hands carefully as he pulls off the bottlecaps for us, but he doesn’t appear to slip anything inside. He doesn’t look intelligent enough to pull of that kind of tricky slight of hand, but I have learned to never make that assumption lightly. I sip at the beer, which tastes watery and flat after the fine wormswart whiskey earlier, and I watch Lock work. His hustle is masterful. He is just inept enough to be convincing, the perfect target for their bullying greediness. He struggles through the first round and loses his money. Then he stands there, a pouting frown on his face, and gives an imperious little stomp of his foot. “I _know_ I can do better than that. Let’s play again. Just one more time.”

The goblins look up, cackling, from where they’ve clustered up to count their winnings. “You sure are a little glutton for punishment,” says the one who believes he’s just won.

“Double or nothing,” demands Lock.

They rack up again.

Someone brings along another ice bucket of beer bottles. I weave my way over to it and fish out my own and one for Barrel, who is curled up on his end of the loveseat lolling in a half-doze, looking like the last thing he needs is another drink. I keep both bottles for myself.

Just as the game starts, a figure walks slowly in front of where we sit, obscuring our view for a moment, then perches on the armrest right next to me. I shrink back and look up. It’s a goblin woman, not much older than the ones jeering around the pool table. She looks down at me and offers a quick and cold smile, then stares back at Lock and the goblins. She sips something clear from a long-stemmed glass.

I try to watch my brother, how his demeanor changes from clumsy and overconfident to businesslike and efficient in landing the balls into the pockets. How the banter from the surrounding spectators wanes and stills into coiled, malevolent silence. But I can’t concentrate with her presence hovering so close to me. As much as I try to keep focused on the scene at the pool table, my eyes keep straying back to her.

She appears at first to not notice me looking, crossing her stocky legs with a careless air as her skirt rides up high on her thighs, sipping her drink slowly. At last she sweeps her gaze down to me. She leans in close, her breasts swelling over the top of her plunging neckline at the movement. “Just a word to the wise,” she says so quietly I have to strain to catch her words. She speaks out of the side of her mouth as if she wants no one to see this exchange. “When your little boyfriend there is done hustling his little ass off, you take the money and you _run_.”

I can’t understand why she would offer this assistance, but I’m not about to waste her time demanding explanations and motives. I nod and I put down the empty beer bottle. She stands up, smoothes out her dress, and slinks away.

“Barrel,” I hiss. He doesn’t move. I can’t contemplate what it means for us if he has become an unresponsive dead weight; that cannot be an option. I shake his leg, I grab him by the shoulders and hoist him up to a somewhat sitting position. “Barrel, open your eyes. Come on.”

“Noooo,” he whines. “Stop.”

“You need to start for the door. Now. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Nooooo.” He tries to lie back down.

I glance around at the goblins surrounding the pool table. None of them look over at us, but that reprieve won’t last long. The balls remaining on the table are few and scattered, especially Lock’s solids. He lines up a shot like a sniper in a watchtower, with near-motionless precision. The cue strikes, the balls clack, and after a chain of mathematically perfect angles, the ball sinks into the pocket. We are running out of time. I grab Barrel by both shoulders and drag him up to his feet. “Go,” I tell him. “Just go to the door. Wait at the door. I’ll buy you candy if you do.”

“I don’t want any more candy,” he whimpers, swaying on his feet. “I already ate lots of candy. I’m tired of candy.”

“I’ll buy you whatever you want.” I glance back at the game. The desperation rises like bile in my throat.

“I want bacon,” he announces. “Eggs and bacon. And toast with butter. No, jelly. No, butter.”

“Yes,” I whisper. I give him a shove back toward the bar. “Yes yes yes. I’ll get you jelly _and_ butter. Just go wait by the door.”

“And bacon and eggs,” he reminds me over his shoulder as he weaves his way back toward the main club area, into the thick of the crowd.

I watch him disappear and hope he remembers how to get there, that he encounters no complications on his way across the crowded room. Then I turn back to the pool game. Lock leans over with his back to me, his tail swishing but his body otherwise immobile as he sets up aim toward the final strike at the eight ball. The money sits in a stack right there on the corner within easy reach, but the huge goblins stand almost in strategic formation all around him and the table. I hold my breath. Everyone holds their breath. Lock’s cue shoots out like a piston of a machine. The white cue ball hurtles forward, dodges a stripes with an impossible spinning curve, connects with the eight ball with a deafening crack. It soars across the green velvet surface, careens off two walls, and sinks into the corner pocket as if pulled there by magnetic force.

All the goblins stand frozen in place. Lock leans the cue against the side of the table and grabs the stack of cash. The cue slides down and falls to the floor, but Lock doesn’t even glance at it as he shoves the fat stack into his pocket. “Thank you, gentlemen, for an entertaining evening,” he says. The childlike cadence of his hustling voice has disappeared. “I appreciate the game and the drinks. Always a pleasure to knock around a few balls with good sports like yourselves.” He downs the last sip at the bottom of his beer bottle.

The goblins around the table shift from foot to foot, glance at each other, and uncross their muscled arms. I step forward and grab Lock’s elbow. “We have to go,” I whisper. Without looking at me, Lock backs away toward the exit to the main bar. I give him a few paces’ head start to put myself between them and the cash winnings.

All the goblins launch into a full sprint in unison, with the synchronized movements of a school of stupid, burly fish. We turn and flee for the door, for the safety of the crowd and the shifting blue lights. Lock heads straight for the exit, and I dodge in the other direction into the densest section of the mass of people. When I glance behind me I see them fan out and close in from all directions like a pack of wolves flushing out wayward prey. The terror I feel is liquid, soluble in my veins with the adrenaline that courses through my muscles. I duck between dancers, bob around drinks, try my best to avoid spilling anything or injuring anyone as I make my getaway. I try to circle around for the exit, but two of them hover, waiting for me, in that direction. I head for the back of the room and hope for a delivery entrance, a back door, even just a good hiding place.

I lose them as the crowd of patrons thins toward the back hallway. I dodge around lines waiting for restrooms, around a couple stumbling to a quiet corner without breaking their sloppy kiss, around a bartender with arms loaded down with unwieldy glasses racks hot from the dishwasher. At the end of the hall, a back door stands like a holy grail. I burst through and find myself outside in the quiet night. My footsteps clatter on the wooden planks of a loading dock. I pause and look in either direction to assess the best route of escape. 

“Gotcha,” breathes a voice behind me. I start to spring straight off the edge of the loading dock, but he grabs me in a chokehold around my neck and clamps my wrists together behind me in his huge hand. I twist to see his face but I can’t move. Pinned up close against his body I can smell the strange odor that rises up from him, like rotting leaves on damp forest earth. I struggle, and he laughs. “You little bastards think you’re so smart, pulling one over on the big guys. Well, who’s the smart one now, huh?”

His stupidity makes him seem more terrifying up close. I twist to try to wrench myself free, and he allows me to turn around in his arms. Then he slams me back against the brick wall of the building. I kick against him, but held up in midair like that I can’t get enough purchase to create any good force. He laughs at my ineffective flailing. “You and your pint-sized little fuckface friends cost us a _lot_ of cash tonight,” he says. “If we can’t get a hold of your twink of a brother who was so good with the pool cue, we’ll just have to make _you_ pay. In fact,” he glances around at the loading dock and the deserted parking lot around us, “I might just make you pay me, either way.”

I wrench myself one way, then another, floundering like a beached fish in an attempt to get free. The brick wall behind me rakes against the backs of my arms as I struggle. All this effort does nothing to loosen me from his huge grip. He just stares down at me and grins, a half-moon of wobbly yellow teeth splitting his bulbous green face. “You just keep on fightin’,” he tells me, and a filmy white tongue slips out between his teeth to lick his lips. “I like ‘em feisty. I like little spitfires with a little _spice_ in ‘em.” He reaches under my skirt and rips my tights so they dangle around my thighs. Then he reaches around behind me and grabs my ass. “I am gonna split you like a pig on a spit,” he grins. He stabs his fat finger between my asscheeks and shoves it through into the tight ring of resistant muscle. His fingernail slices at me all the way in like a jagged shard of rock. I can’t help it, I cry out. The sound I make sounds like an injured kitten. I wince, he laughs.

The adrenaline starts pumping through me faster, clearing my head and numbing the pain. I feel like a wild animal, cornered but ready to give in to the visceral fight or flight impulse that sings through my brainstem. He withdraws his hand from my ass, my blood tingeing his dirty fingernail, and he frees his cock from his pants. His grotesque erection is huge and stubby, fatter than he is long, a deeper green than his other visible skin. It shines with slimy precome oozing steadily from the slit. The earthy smell is overpowering.

He glances down for an instant, loosens his grip on my hands for an instant, and an instant is all I need. I wrench my arm away and shove my hand into my boot, close my fingers around the handle of the switchknife in there. It is open and at the ready as soon as I pull it fully free from my boot. And before he’s even registered that I have moved, the blade is buried to the hilt in the meat of his thigh. He gapes at me like a giant, stunned bottom-dwelling carp. Before he can even react to the pain of the wound, I extract the knife and plunge it into his gut. I give it a twist as I pull it across. It feels like slicing up fillets of particularly tough raw meat for the stewpot. He drops his hands to his sides and stares down at my arm, at my hand half-buried in the folds of this long stab wound he now suddenly possesses. There is no pain in his expression, only flat confusion. “You fucking _stabbed_ me,” he says. “Why’d you _stab_ me?”

The door to the loading dock flies open with a bang. We both look up to see another of the goblins rush out toward us. I withdraw my hand and a new wave of warm blood floods over it as I move. I skitter away as the goblin approaches his injured friend. “Oh Jesus, _Jesus_ , what happened to you?”

“That little cunt _stabbed_ me.”

“That little cunt works for Oogie Boogie, you moron. Oh my god, put your dick _away_ , what were you _doing_ to her? Do you even know what Oogie Boogie is gonna do to you if he finds out?" 

“Dude, she fucking _stabbed_ me.”

I slip the switchknife back into my boot and duck through the loading dock entrance, back into the club. Nobody looks twice at me as I weave through the crowd and push my way back out the front door. A wave of relief hits me to find Lock and Barrel waiting there with the wolfman bouncer. Barrel is standing reasonably upright; he seems to be chatting with the annoyed-looking bouncer. Lock looks relieved to see me, then tenses up when he takes in my appearance. The bouncer looks down at me and then looks quickly away, as if he wants to remain ignorant of any of this troublesome information.

Lock grabs my hand, the one without the blood. “Come on.” With his other hand he snags Barrel by the elbow and pulls us both away from the door and the lights and the crowds. We head back out of the Underground. “Are you all right?” he asks me.

“I guess so.”

He doesn’t speak again, and neither do Barrel and I.

The twisting alleys and close, sagging buildings of the Underground thin out and we emerge at the far side of town near the lake. The treehouse looms in the middle distance, but none of us feel ready to return there. I slow and veer toward the water.

“What are you doing?” Lock demands.

I gesture down at my dress. “I’m just going to rinse some of this off. Before the stain sets.”

They watch me kneel at the edge of the rocky shore and attempt to splash some water up on the bloody fabric. “This is a lost cause,” says Lock. Barrel sits heavily down as if his legs have given out.

“It is not.” I abandon the splashing tactic and pull off my boots, my ruined tights, and I unload my pockets of the matches and the nightshade joint. Then I wade into the water and let it engulf the stain completely.

Lock laughs. “Is it cold as hell?”

“It’s cold,” I admit. “It feels amazing.” My skin, prickly and burning from the terror and violence of the evening, cools under the lake water. I can almost feel my overheated molecules calm themselves and slow their vibrations as my body temperature sinks, my muscles unclench, my blood pressure dips back down into normal ranges. I work my hands over the fibers of the front of my dress to try and coax the blood away. It’s too dark to tell if it’s working or not, but I don’t even care. “You guys should take a dip. It’s nice.”

After a moment I hear rustling and unzipping behind me. Lock slides in first, fully naked. He takes a few steps past me until the water is at his hips, then he dives under and swims beneath the surface for a few paces, lithe as a fish. Barrel follows close behind with his underwear still on. He hobbles a bit unsteadily before lying on his back and floating. When he closes his eyes and lies still, he looks exactly like a drowned boy.

I breaststroke the short distance over toward the rock where Lock is. He holds onto its mossy side, then hoists himself up and out of the water. The moonlight reflects off his wet, pale skin and makes him look like a sculpture, white and cold as alabaster. He dives off the rock with a low, controlled splash.

A swishing sound bubbles up behind me, and I turn to check on Barrel. He hasn’t moved from his floating position, but something else flips through the water just below the surface, leaving a long wake of snakelike lines behind it. “Lock,” I whisper. He turns from where he was climbing back up on the rock and follows my gaze to the movement in the water. He freezes.

Out of the water rises a fin, then a face. Large eyes, wide lips pursed in a pale bow. The eyes blink at us, then the figure rises further from the water. “Oh, it’s just _you_ little hooligans,” says the Lady of the Lake, her yellow eyes looking at us with clear disapproval. She crosses her arms, taps her webbed fingers impatiently. “What on _earth_ are you up to? And on Halloween night.”

“Just…going for a little dip,” says Lock.

The Lady slithers back below the surface so only her face and the top half of her head are visible, and she moves through the water like a sea-snake. She circles Lock a few times. From the way he flinches ever so slightly I know she must be brushing up against him underwater, her fins smooth as seaweed against his skin. “Just a little dip, huh?” Her voice is low and pendulous as waves. “Stinking drunk. I can taste the liquor seeping off of you and into my water. And I can taste something else, too.” She looks him up and down, fails to see what she wants, then turns to me. “There it is. And not just a little blood, either. I could smell that from half a mile away. And I’m not gonna be the only one to come calling, trying to see what tasty snack has wandered into these waters. But I’m the only one who’s got more mercy than I got teeth. So you better watch out."

I glance over at Barrel, who has pulled himself back over to the pebble-covered shore, and who now sits with his legs under the lapping waves, watching silently. I pull myself up onto the rock to put some distance between myself and the Lady. After a moment, Lock does too. He sits next to me and watches the Lady swim in lazy, predatory figure eights. From the corner of my eye I look down at his dick, shriveled from the cool water, as it begins to thicken and lengthen against his thigh. He doesn’t appear embarrassed or even aware of it; he is too caught up in staring at her slow, swirling movements. She is a siren; she could coax him from the rock and straight to his death if she chose. I think right now she’s only giving us a gentle warning. I feel annoyed at him for his attraction, but also strangely comforted that his response to her is so natural and normal. I watch her seducing movements and I feel nothing. Something deep inside me is broken, rotted, missing.

The Lady flips her long tail and rises up out of the water again. “You kids better exercise some judgment,” she says. “Skinny dipping under the influence, covered in someone else’s blood. You go on now. You’re a liability I do not need.” She bares her tiny, spiky teeth. We both jump off the rock and swim for shore. She watches us until we are out of the water, then she disappears like a submarine under the surface.

I pull on my boots and watch the boys struggle into their clothes over their wet bodies. Lock’s erection looks obscene and ridiculous bulging out of his tight red pants, a damp outline highlighting the fact that he isn’t wearing underwear. Barrel’s baggier black clothes conceal the wet patches and any physical response he might have, but the awkward way he moves when he walks answers my questions.

Lock gives me a disgusted glare. “Why do you have to be such a fucking perv?”

I smile pure sweetness back at him. “I didn’t say a word.”

“You didn’t have to.” He adjusts himself in his pants, but it only succeeds in making the bulge more prominent. He sighs, more exasperated than embarrassed.

Barrel, who had struggled to his feet as he dressed and stumbled a few paces away from the water’s edge, suddenly sits back down. “You promised me bacon.”

Lock looks from Barrel to me and back again. He looks vaguely concerned, as if perhaps Barrel has become delusional. “Who did? Promised you _what_?”

“And eggs.” Barrel stares dejectedly at his bare feet.

“I was trying to motivate him to the door,” I explain.

“You _promised_.” Barrel sounds close to tears. I reach down and help him to his feet.

“How the hell are you planning on whipping up a bacon breakfast at this time of night?” Lock asks me. The expression of disgust on his face hasn’t changed.

“Field trip,” I tell him.

“And eggs,” Barrel insists. “And _toast_.”

We make our staggering way toward the graveyard, correcting Barrel’s listing progress back into a straight line every few steps. Walking up the hills is exhausting, but walking down them is perilous. By the time we are almost there, I am panting and inwardly cursing myself for opening my mouth in the first place, cursing Barrel for his operational short term memory even under these circumstances, cursing Halloweentown and its lack of late-night dining options. Barrel falls at the end of the last hill, takes Lock out with him, and they slide to a stop in the dirt at the edge of the graveyard. I watch them haul each other back up to their feet without offering to help at all.

Lock glowers at me, then leads the way into the rows of headstones. “Let’s get this over with,” he grumbles, glancing at the carved writing on each one as he passes by.

Barrel runs his hand over the smooth curves of the headstones’ tops as he passes by, but makes no act of even attempting to look at the words. He just bumbles along, trusting as a small child, fully expecting we will make good on our promises of food. I follow along without reading either. Finally Lock stops so short Barrel knocks into him. “Here, this one’ll work.” He lifts the stone and we slip inside.

In the total absence of light inside the portal, it always feels to me as if the air suddenly becomes thinner, scarcer. I resist the urge to gasp for breath at the cold sensation that seeps into my lungs as we push through the darkness. Though it only takes a moment, it always seems like a much longer journey. Lock pushes the door at the other end and we emerge into the breeze and the hum of the Ordinary world.

We clamber one by one out of the door in the grave, and we make our way to the cemetery gate and the streets beyond. It’s quiet here, and late – not so late that we look out of place wandering around the streets, but late enough that the children running door to door in their costumes are fewer and older. The younger crowd in their princess gowns and their cowboy chaps have taken their candy and gone home to bed, and now the streets hold pockets of Ordinary adolescents in their halfhearted, makeshift costumes, awkward in their limbo between childhood and maturity. We pass their self-conscious clusters without drawing their attention.

As we walk, Lock glances at me, runs his eyes over the front of my clothes. “That stain didn’t really come off in the water.”

I look down. He’s right; it looks much the same as before: smaller spatters like paint flecks surrounding a larger, solid spill. A macabre ink-blot test all over me. “Yeah. Well. At least it’s Halloween tonight.”

He is silent for several long moments as we trudge down the sidewalk, his eyes on the stain the whole time. “Is he dead?” he asks at last.

“I don’t know. He wasn’t when I left him.”

“Did you have to _stab_ him?”

I stop walking. After a few steps Lock stops too. Barrel keeps marching crookedly on, unmoved in his pursuit of food. Look looks at me with eyebrows raised, waiting for my answer, my justification.

“I…” My words sputter and die in my mouth.

“It’s just that, it seems to me if you had time to get out a knife and attack him, you had time to get away, right?”

“I didn’t _attack_ him. I was _defending_ myself. Why are you giving me a hard time about this?" 

Lock glances up at Barrel, who has finally noticed he’s left us behind and now sits on the curb, waiting like a kid in time-out. “It’s just not our normal course of action, okay? I’m just a little worried about what He’s going to do when word gets around.” He’s trying to look cool and collected, but I can see the panicked light in his eyes. The scenarios in his imagination, the consequences he’ll receive for allowing his naughty little sister to misbehave in public. We are His weapons; He doesn’t like it when we detonate on our own.

“I’ll take the fall for this,” I tell him. “I won’t let Him punish you.”

“I really don’t see how you could stop Him.”

The thread of fear behind his annoyance makes my insides ache. I want to tell him all about my great plans, conspire with him to make it happen, work together like the devious little partners that we’re supposed to be. But we are out of sync. He can imagine living only this way, but I am burning to shed this life like an outgrown skin. I want to tell him all this, but the words won’t come.

“You guys,” Barrel calls from up the street, “I’m so hungry.”

Lock sighs and shakes his head at me, then turns away to rejoin Barrel. I trail just a few paces behind. We follow the small residential street to where it feeds out onto a main road, and from there it’s just the distance of a few short blocks before we stumble into the yellow lights of an all-night diner. Inside it is alive with noise and smells, half the patrons in full costume, everyone talking loudly over the hiss of the frying griddle. We slip into the slightly sticky vinyl benches of a vacant booth.

It takes a long time for the waitress to come up to our table. She approaches at a quick clip at first, then slows as she gets nearer. I can see her face darken with the effort of deciding whether or not we spell trouble – where are their parents? Exactly how old are they? Are they going to skip out on the ticket? Lock eases a few of the bills from the pool game out of his pocket and onto the edge of the table. Halloweentown currency looks and spends the same in the Ordinary world, although the exchange rate tends to be poor. The waitress glances at the bills and seems to relax just a bit. She steps up to us and pulls a pencil out from behind her ear, nudging the cat-ears headband she’s wearing slightly off center. “Nice costumes. You kids having a good Halloween so far?” she asks.

Barrel bounces in his seat as he nods. “The _best_.”

As she gets a good look at us up close, she starts to tense up again. The Ordinaries are in general a bunch of unperceptive apes, but if they stare straight at us long enough they will sense our other-ness, the dark and foreign energy that we radiate. We are meant to be skulking through their shadows and lurking in their bad dreams, not relaxing in their diners eating their bacon and eggs. The waitress can sense this, even if she can’t put her finger right on it. I sit up straight and I smile at her as I project waves of calm, like a snake enthralling a frightened mouse. It works for the moment. She takes Barrel’s large order and leaves. I sit back in the booth again. It won’t last long.

We wait for the food. Barrel drinks all the tiny cups of creamer on the table and then makes a pyramid stack of the empties. Lock pulls a cinnamon gumball from his pocket and rolls it at Barrel’s pyramid like a bowling ball. They laugh, they get flecks of leftover cream all over the table, they’ve just begun throwing sugar packets at each other when the waitress returns with arms laden with our food.

“Here you kids go,” she says. She spreads out Barrel’s bacon and eggs and toast, Lock’s waffle, and my cup of coffee. Her eyes take in the wreckage the boys have been working on creating, and her expression looks more fearful than annoyed. I sit up and try again to project more tranquility over her as she meets my stare. _Nothing to fear, nothing to fear_ , I think over and over, swaying with imperceptible slowness just like the snake would. It seems to work again, but the film of calm is so thin and delicate I know it won’t last. She gives me a vacant smile. “You need anything else?”

“Butter,” says Barrel, mouth full of scrambled eggs. “ _And_ jelly.”

She leaves, and I lean across the table. “Eat fast and we can skip the check. I can’t hold her long. She’s suspicious.”

Lock shoves a good third of the waffle into his mouth and wipes whipped cream off his chin. “These dumb simians,” he mutters around his half-chewed bite. He seems to forget the rest of his thought as he shoves in another chunk, this one piled high with strawberries.

The waitress returns to drop the butter pats and jelly packets onto the table, then disappears again without a word. I watch Barrel pile gobs of jelly onto a slice of toast with a look of rapture on his face. I slip my hand into my pocket again and fondle the nightshade joint. Maybe I could sneak into the bathroom and smoke it. I glance around the room. There is a line for the bathrooms already. Near the bathrooms our waitress talks to a man in a tie who must be a manager. She gestures at our table and casts a sidelong glance our way. When she notices me looking at her she turns away quickly as though she’s been caught red-handed looking at something she shouldn’t. “Eat fast, you guys,” I tell them.

Barrel starts picking up the food with both hands like a feral child. I reach over to Lock’s plate and steal the last strawberry, trail it quickly in the leftover smear of whipped cream and take it before he can snatch it back. He watches me with eyebrows raised as I swirl it over my lips in a parody of seduction. He snorts, sticks his middle finger in the plate, then slowly fellates away the whipped cream as he flips me the bird. Barrel laughs out loud at us and flecks of bacon fall from his mouth.

The manager breaks away from the corner where he was huddled with the waitress, and he heads our way at an authoritative march. There’s no time now for subtlety and calmness. “Let’s go,” Lock says as he stuffs the money on the table back into his pocket. Barrel grabs the remaining slices of toast as we shimmy out of the booth and scoot around to the emergency exit. The manager starts screaming just before the alarm begins blaring, and he sprints to catch us. He is fat and lumbering, already red-faced with the exertion. I let him get just close enough to brush his grasping hands at the back of my dress – a little gift to him, a brief sense that he has a chance – before I speed away laughing to catch up with the boys. We disappear around the streetcorner.

We crouch in the alley just behind a row of garbage cans and listen, stifling our giggles. Nothing approaches except for a few cautious rats who quickly back away at our alien scent. After a few minutes we feel safe enough to emerge.

We take the long way back to the graveyard, stopping off at a convenience store where, with our assistance, Lock expertly shoplifts toilet paper, eggs, and a forty of malt liquor. Then we slip from shadow to shadow around the drowsy, anonymous little town and wreak our signature havoc. As I dart around with my brothers, tossing toilet paper rolls over branches, flinging eggs onto cars and vinyl siding, swilling the foul-tasting drink, I lose myself in the pure joy of our mischief. It feels like home.

The malt liquor hits us all hard, buoyed by the adrenaline of our miscreant behavior. We leave the spent toilet paper rolls and empty egg cartons behind in our wake as we stumble back to the graveyard. Back through the headstone door, the cold and airless portal, back home.

In the dim pre-dawn light, the town looks sooty and unfamiliar. We zigzag through the deserted town square, littered with the trampled remains of the earlier festivities. The cobblestones on the walkway seem to swirl and converge under my feet. I stumble. “Fuck you,” I spit.

“Did you just curse out the ground?” Lock asks.

“It tripped me.”

“Guys,” Barrel whines, “I’m gonna puke.”

Lock and I speed up our pace in unison to get away from him. “Do it discreetly,” Lock suggests.

Barrel’s loud retching and the watery plops are anything but discreet. I hazard a glance behind me to see him hunched over the fountain. “Oh, geez.”

Lock turns around as well. “That’ll be a fun mystery for them to mull over. Who spewed bacon and eggs all over the town square?”

“And toast.” I turn away from my brother’s energetic vomiting and look into the shadowy road ahead. “Is that the Mayor’s hearse?”

We approach the parked car. It’s pulled under a tree, keys in the ignition. A crazy grin of delight spreads across Lock’s face as he reaches for the door handle.

“Wait.” I grab his wrist and lower my voice. “He might be in there. Passed out in the back. Or screwing someone.”

“Let’s check.”

“No, I don’t want to see his fat naked ass. Let’s just go get Barrel.” I pull at Lock’s arm, but he’s already moving to the back of the vehicle, peering into the curtained windows. “Come on, Lock.”

“I think it’s empty.” He cups his fingers around his eyes and squints in closer. “It’s definitely empty. He’s gone.” Lock tries the back door and it swings open with a creak. “Man, look how he’s got this thing tricked out!”

I peek around Lock’s shoulder. The back of the hearse has benches lined in red velvet surrounding a plush shag carpet in the middle. The corner is a built-in mini bar. Everything glows under the red lights that pipe across the ceiling. Lock climbs in. “This is hilarious. Is this where he brings the ladies to drug them before he fucks them?” He reclines on the shag carpet and props himself up on one elbow, running his hand along the furry carpet fibers. “Come join me in the sex-hearse, baby.” He waggles his eyebrows at me.

“Ew. Get out of there. You’re going to catch a venereal disease off that carpet.”

He laughs and goes to the mini bar, unloads a few bottles of liquor before scrambling back out of the car. He hands a bottle to me to carry. “Hey, we should take it for a spin.”

“We should?”

“Yeah! We wouldn’t have to walk all the way home.”

“Lock, you dumbass, if they find it parked right out side _our house_ , guess who they’ll accuse of stealing it.”

He unscrews the cap on one of the bottles and sniffs, then takes a swig. He hands it to me. I am already too drunk, but I take a swallow anyway. Whatever it is tastes like coconuts and burns my throat. He takes it back and drinks again. “Let’s at least see how fast it can go.”

It’s a terrible idea, but I climb into the passenger side anyway. It takes him an awkward moment to figure out the clutch and the gear shift, and then he discovers he is not quite tall enough to reach everything sitting down. He stands while he floors it, and the hearse wobbles in an uneven path half on the road, half in the grass.

“This is really as fast as you can make it go?” I goad.

He looks frustrated, grinding the gears and trying to rev the engine. “This thing is a total trash heap.”

“You don’t know how to drive it.”

“Yeah, I’d like to see you do better!” We’ve left the road entirely. He narrowly misses a tree dead ahead, jerks the wheel to the right, and we fishtail over the grass. The engine stalls and the hearse slows, then hits a tree with an anticlimactic _plunk_. We’ve stopped.

“Great joyride, Lock. I’m really impressed.”

He punches my arm but mostly misses, grazing me with his knuckles. “Bite me.”

We tumble out and assess the damage. The tree seems to have sustained more injury than the hearse, but they’re both only slightly dinged. We gather up the bottles and trudge back up to the square.

Barrel sits on the ground, leaning up against the stone fountain and looking wan. He struggles to his feet when we approach. “What the hell?”

“Lock wrecked the Mayor-mobile,” I inform him. “It was a wild ride. I think we made it up to four miles per hour before he crashed.”

Lock tries to punch my arm again, and this time misses entirely. He turns to Barrel. “You good?”

Barrel wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sways a little on his feet. “Yeah, I’m good.”

We set out toward home. It’s almost sunrise when we arrive. We stop at the elevator and stare up at the treehouse against the lightening sky. Lock moves first, dragging open the elevator door with a rusty screech that vibrates in my skull. “He’s still gone,” Lock says. I can feel it too. Perhaps He is still down at the tavern behind the unmarked door racking up the chips, or maybe He has made His way up to Ordinary to create a far greater magnitude of mischief than what we left behind. Lock holds the gate open. Barrel stops to throw up one more time in the bushes before climbing in. I feel like my head is detached from my body, bobbing along gamely like a balloon on a string. As the ground disappears below us and the elevator slips into the maw of the house’s interior, Barrel leans against Lock and closes his eyes.

“We may have overdone it,” Lock admits.

The elevator bumps to a stop and I open the gate, then look back at Lock dragging the half-conscious Barrel like a dead body. “He’s going to die of alcohol poisoning.”

“No, he’s not. I’ll stay with him. What do you got in your stash?”

I go to Barrel’s other side and hoist him up by the armpit. “To cure a hangover? You think you can get him to drink some fucking herbal tea in this state? He can’t even walk by himself.” We shuffle down the hall, one of his arms thrown over each of us, making torturous progress toward his room. Barrel lolls his head around and moans, so I know he’s responsive at least.

“I can make it work if you got something.”

I run over my mental inventory. The turmeric is used up, but dandelion and thistle bitters might help. I should have enough. “Yeah, I got something.”

We make it to his room and dump him on the bed. It annoys me that I have to go all the way back down to the kitchen and boil water when all I want to do is collapse into my own bed and sleep the whole night away, but I collect the herbs from my stash and make a pot of tea, then haul it back upstairs to Barrel’s room. Lock has managed to get him out of his puke-stained clothes and prop him up on the pillows. I plunk the teapot and two mugs onto the bedside table. “You drink some too. It’s going to taste like shit, but it’ll help your liver metabolize everything.”

“You’re a genius.” Lock grabs me around the shoulders and pecks me on the cheek. I shove him off, smiling. “But aren’t you going to have a cup too?”

“I’ll be fine.” I look over at Barrel, who has curled up on his side and slid off the pillows completely. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I leave him to his babysitting task and stalk back to my room. At the very bottom of my box on the shelf sits the bag of supplies the doctor gave me. I pull out the tall brown bottle.   _Helleborus Rosa extract. For pain relief. Do not exceed one teaspoon per 24 hour period._ I pick up a small glass and pour in a splash. That could be a teaspoon. That could be a teaspoon and a half. I have never been good at eyeballing dosage. I tip it back like a shot at a bar. It tastes light and floral, like the fragrant rose hellebore it’s derived from, extra sweet in its medicinal syrup. I hide the bottle back at the bottom of the bag, piled below everything else in the back corner of the box, to squash the temptation to take another shot. The brown bottle is already so light it is almost empty. And on top of tonight’s bender, another dose would probably leave me braindead. I haven’t worked so hard at surviving all He’s thrown at me just to accidentally off myself by trying to forget it all. That wouldn’t be fair.

I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, feeling the wormy fingers of the rose hellebore start to creep into the edge of my consciousness. I haven’t been able to sleep the night through since the doctor agreed to help me weeks ago. Why hasn’t he contacted me yet? Didn’t he promise my request was high priority? How am I going to make this work, and what will happen to me if I fail? The worry keeps me awake like noise pollution until the drug links arms with the alcohol and drags me under.

 


	7. Chapter 7

The knocking appears in my murky dream and nudges me up to the surface. I lie still and attempt to comprehend the concept of knocking, what I’m supposed to do next. Before it comes to me, the knocking stops and the door opens. I prop myself up on my elbows and look at the blurry figures of my brothers bob into my room, incomprehensible and absurd as rubber ducks floating down a river. I swallow. My mouth feels stuffed with cotton wads. “Hey,” I croak.

Lock is pale, but Barrel is much paler. He stands hunched over like an elderly hospice patient. We all squint at each other for a moment before Lock clears his throat. “He needs us.”

“No. Oh fuck.”

“Yeah.” Lock crosses his arms tight over his chest and pulls his shoulders inward. I hope if he’s going to puke he makes it out of my room first.

I sit up all the way and look down at myself. I’m still wearing the bloodsoaked dress, the torn tights. The hilt of the switchknife nudges out of the top of my boot. There’s a smudge of whipped cream on my sleeve, a dried veneer of raw egg smeared all up my arm. I am an archeological dig site of the ruins of last night. I run my hands through my wild hair and grope around the bed for my hat. It’s nowhere to be found.

Lock bends down next to the bed and picks up my hat from where it’s fallen. He hands it to me without a word, with his effortless and innate understanding of what I’m looking for. It’s so easy and familiar it breaks my heart, even in my foggy state. I take it from him and avoid his eyes. “Should I change clothes?” I ask.

“I don’t think it matters,” says Lock. 

Barrel sways on his feet. “Can we just go?”

I push out of the bed and follow them down the hall to the elevator. The boys both moan as the chains lurch into motion and drop us down into the long shaft of darkness. I lean my head against the bars. The narcotic fog masks any hangover I might have, but its effects are beginning to slowly dissipate. It always leaves me with a leaden, sad afterglow. Dragging myself around is an effort; meeting people’s eyes feels impossible. I thread my fingers through the iron bars and heave a sigh that I hope would relieve the weighted feeling, but it only makes me heavier. I turn to the boys, their pale faces and thin mouths. “I wasn’t aware there was a conference last night.”

“I wasn’t aware of much at all last night,” mumbles Barrel. Lock snorts out a laugh, then winces and rubs his temple.

The elevator reaches the bottom floor, but we all pause before leaving. The energy is all wrong for a post-conference cleanup. Someone’s still in there. And He is with them, too.

“Are you sure He wanted us _now_?” I whisper. I can feel my heart trying to speed up in the sudden fear I know I should be feeling, but the weight of the comedown is too much.

“That’s exactly what He said,” says Lock, but he sounds uncertain.

We wait and listen. There’s movement from behind the door – His unmistakable heavy steps, unidentifiable shuffling and rustling. It’s not cold but my muscles try to shiver in spite of the heavy exhaustion. Lock rubs my arm in a quick gesture of comfort, and I squeeze his hand in gratitude. He opens the door and we all walk in.

The lights are all dimmed except the theatrical blacklights and the neon accents. He’s got several of the wheels spinning and the effects going, but it’s all just leftover at this point. His victim is already trussed up and hanging from his wrists on the meathook, swaying with gentle inertia, but otherwise motionless. This conference should be drawing to a close. I can’t fathom why He’s called us here. We file into the room and stand near the periphery of all the equipment, well behind the victim, out of the way. I squint up at the dangling body but I don’t recognize who it is from behind.

A shuffling sound comes up from the shadows across the room, and then He emerges. He’s carrying a box in one hand a large knife in the other. When He sees us His face splits into a malicious grin. “Ah, there’s my good little henchmen,” He says, His voice singsongy and condescending. He walks up to where we stand. “You had a busy little Halloween night, didn’t you? Looking a little weak there, babydoll.” He chucks Barrel under the chin with the flat of the knife. Barrel lifts his head higher, eyes round but brave. “And you’re not lookin’ your best either, young man,” He says to Lock. He traces the knifepoint along Lock’s chest, snagging against the fabric of his shirt as it grazes by. Lock doesn’t blink. I steel myself for my turn to be acknowledged, but to my surprise he doesn’t even look at me. He abruptly turns from us and walks back toward the meathook and the victim hanging limply there. He gestures sharply with His knife as He walks and we quickstep to follow Him like good little soldiers. He talks over His shoulder as we move. “I need you to go on a little errand,” He says, His voices echoing through the cavernous room. “I’m gonna need you to return this gentleman’s _effects_ to his next of kin. You recognize him from your escapades last night, yes?” He reaches up to the hanging victim and grasps him by the head, turns him sharply to face us.

The goblin is still alive, blinking at us with stoic hopelessness. His face is beaten to such a swollen pulp I can barely make out the green-tinged features. Streams of blood ooze from his nose and mouth. He hangs naked, and I can clearly make out my two switchknife wounds even amid the myriad of new injuries he’s acquired. It looks like He has flogged him with a length of chain and perhaps the razor wire as well. The goblin’s naked body is a mess, pathetic, nothing like the menace that threatened me harm out on the loading dock. That seems like so long ago and far away now.

“Seems you had _multiple_ escapades with this maggoty motherfucker last night. Am I right, kitten?” I meet His gaze but I don’t reply. “Word got back to me pretty quick how this _presumptuous_ little shit was so riled up about losing big to some talented little hustler that he attempted to take some…” He pauses to turn back to the goblin, “ _collateral_.”

The goblin makes a weak burbling sound from somewhere in his throat.

“But that ain’t how the game goes, is it, sweet cheeks?” He swipes his knifepoint along the goblin's cheek, opening a fresh wound and a new line of blood. “That ain’t how we play. You lose, you pay. And if you try to take what’s _mine_ ,” He traces the knife down the goblin’s ruined body, “you _pay_.” His knife-hand reaches between the goblin’s legs, and in one swift, circular motion he carves off his dick, smooth as slicing off the stem of a jack o’ lantern. The goblin’s eyes roll back into his head, and he makes an otherworldly keening noise that fills the room like a howling wind. Barrel and Lock turn away and one of them makes a retching sound, but I keep my eyes still and steady and take in the sight. The goblin’s mouth falls open and his head pitches forward as he succumbs to either unconsciousness or death. The severed organ flops in Oogie’s grasp like a dead squid. He tosses it in the air, then puts it in His mouth and tears off the corner with a loud squelch. As He chews, He tosses the rest of it into the box He holds and closes the lid.

We all stand in silence. There isn’t any sound in the whole room but the white-noise whirring of the machinery in the background and the rhythmic drip of the goblin’s blood onto the cement floor, punctuated intermittently by the rubbery sound of His chewing. Finally He swallows and laughs a low chuckle. “And now, boys, you take this box and you get going.”

Lock, paler than ever, steps forward dutifully and holds out his hands to receive the box. It’s clear he expected it to be heaver than it is. “Do you want us to give them a message too?” he asks.

Oogie’s chuckle grows in intensity. “Oh, I think this sends the message loud and clear, don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir.” Lock holds the box at arms’ length and we all turn to go.

“Shock,” He calls softly.

I freeze.

“You stay here,” He says.

My brothers hesitate for an instant to see if there are any further instructions for them; when nothing more comes, they hurry from the room. They leave us behind them in expectant, charged silence. The blood drips, the machines hum and whir. I keep my eyes locked on Him, as He stands with arms crossed, head cocked, regarding me steadily. He is the one who blinks first. He uncrosses His arms and closes the distance between us. When His hand reaches out to me, I tense every muscle against the involuntary flinch that my body threatens to give. His hand cups the side of my head, then slowly strokes my hair. He kneels until we are almost eye level. When He speaks, His voice is low and musical, alluring as a cobra. “You know I would never let anyone hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

I have no choice but to deliver my lines. “Yes. I know.”

“I would torture a _thousand_ monsters to keep you safe.” His hand strokes my hair, brushes against my cheek, ghosts along the edge of my collarbone as he rubs my shoulder. Even the roughness of his skin feels gentle as he brushes it across mine. The part of my brain that is starved for this kind of contact laps it up like rainfall on parched ground. My eyes flutter closed.

His arm wraps around me and He pulls me close, rubs my back, plays with my hair. “My clever girl,” He murmurs, His lips brushing my ear. “My poor sweet little darlin’. They don’t understand you out there in the world. They don’t see what I see. Your brilliant brain. Your cunning hands. They don’t understand. That’s why you keep coming on home to me.” His hand trails down from my hair to the small of my back and slowly rubs along the base of my spine, while His other hand touches along the back of my neck, tracing the curves of my top vertebrae. I melt into His body, leaning my full weight against the coarse texture of Him. “There she is,” He whispers into my ear. “There’s my girl.”

We stay there, suspended in time, while the machines keep their endless purring, while the dripping blood from the suspended body slows and congeals. He keeps stroking my back while I stay pressed against Him, my heart beating slow against the answering hive-hum within his own chest. At length a long, heaving sigh works its way out of me all on its own accord. He hums a low laugh that reverberates through His chest and He gently pulls me back so He can see my face. His smile is dreamy, His eyelids lowered to an expression of sleepy contentment. He brushes his hand along my lips. “How ‘bout you get down on those knees and give Oogie that pretty mouth of yours.”

He reclines back as I sink down. He’s hard already, harder than He is when He ties me to the table or pins me under Him in my bed. Straightforward violence turns Him on, but this insidious, subtle evil drives Him wild. He’s already leaking when I take Him into my mouth; the acidic fluid burns my gums and tingles on my tongue like an allergic reaction. The corners of my mouth split and crack as I stretch my lips over His massive girth.  I sneak a glance up to His face; He still wears the dreamy half-lidded look in his eyes, the curl of a smile like smoke from a snuffed candle. But underneath I can see the thinnest ghost of His usual vicious glee. I feel split into two separate selves: part of me fully comprehends that I am entrapped in His artful, wicked design; the other part of me is helpless in His hands as they move with uncharacteristic gentleness. As I work my mouth over Him, He strokes my head, caresses my hair, throws His head back and moans in an open, vulnerable pleasure that is so out of character it takes my breath away. I move with inspired enthusiasm, swirling my tongue along the head of His cock, stroking my hand at the base where my mouth can’t reach, desperate to milk out His approval, His affection, His rare tenderness.

His hand grips against my scalp and His hips roll in time with my movements. “Shock,” He hisses, “Shock.” My eyes close at the sound of my real name on His lips, spoken reverent as a novena in the place of all the patronizing nicknames. He presses His hands against my head with a soft but irresistible pressure as He guides my movements the way He needs. “Yes. God. You do it so good. Oh. Oh.” He thrusts deeper and deeper into my mouth, plunging my throat with a blunt force that plugs and releases my airway in rhythmic time. I pull my mouth away at the last possible second just as his testicles contract and send jets of His corrosive seed spurting out. I aim the head of His dick away from me so the come splatters harmlessly on the cement floor, and I watch His face. His head is rolled back in the throes of ecstasy, and as He catches His breath He never stops stroking his hands through my hair with a touch that telegraphs more of possession than affection. He lifts His head and smiles at me. “Nobody does it like you do, kitten.”

“Thank you,” I murmur.

He ruffles my hair and leans in to brush a kiss on my forehead. Terror at His closeness and longing for more course through me in tandem. As He presses his lips on my forehead, I can feel Him smiling His devious grin. His every move is calculated to absolute precision. There is no love here for me. The sadness drapes over me like a shroud. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter to force the tears away.

When He moves away from me, the breeze in His wake is cold against my arms and face. I stare at the floor and listen to His movements: the clanging as he rattles the meathook chain, the thud of the goblin’s body as it hits the floor. I turn and look at it, at the gruesome angle of its twisted neck and the unnatural splay of the limbs. Even the blood from between the legs has stopped flowing. The goblin is gone; he was no witness to our act on the floor. Oogie gives the body a halfhearted kick as He walks back toward the control panel on the wall. I hear him throw the switches one by one, and the forgotten machines lose power in succession and grind to a stop. He turns on the overhead lights and the dramatic shadows drown instantly in the fluorescent glare. “Now, listen,” He says.

I listen.

“There’s some bullshit town meeting tonight. I need you there. Let me know what kind of idiotic crap that mayor’s cookin’ up with his head up Skellington’s ass.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you stay out of the spotlight. I don’t want the whole town seeing you there. We clear?”  


“Yes, sir.”

“You just keep your ears open and you report back to me. I don’t want the world to think I give two shits about what that jackoff and his pocket politician are up to. But I still gotta keep tabs. They’re likely to come up with some kind of idiotic new proposal that’ll burn my empire to the ground. How the fuck he stays in office is beyond me. The fucking voting populace can’t possibly be as goddamn oblivious as that asshole. Shit.”

I’m not certain if He is still addressing me, or just speaking His rambling thoughts out loud. I play it safe and keep silent, but I rise to my feet and stand at the ready for any further instructions. He seems to have forgotten I am there as He hoists the body up in one arm as if it weighs nothing at all, and He tosses it onto the chopping block next to the mixer. The mixing blades churn to life as he switches the machine on, and the heating element beneath the oil within glows orange. He turns back to me. “You can get to work on the cleanup in here later, after the meeting. I assume you’ll want to… _freshen up_ …maybe just a bit.”

My hand strays to the crusty bloodstain on the front of my clothes. I feel my face flush under His stare. “Yes, sir.”

“If the boys come back before you leave, you tell ‘em I’m sending you alone. You three are too damn conspicuous together.” He looks back at the mixer, assesses the state of the bubbling oil.   “Go on and change outta your walk of shame getup. You be good now.”

“Yes, sir.” I get out of there as fast as I can without actually running.

By the time I reach my room, the narcotic fog has lifted completely and the comedown has enveloped me like quicksand. I drag my clothes off and leave them in a heap on the floor. I should throw them in the garbage. I should burn them. The hangover pounds its way in, unencumbered by the drug now, threatening to engulf me like a natural disaster. I dig through my box on the shelf and pull out the doctor’s brown bottle, hold it up to the light to see the contents. There is so little left I want to cry. I pour what might be a teaspoon into my glass and drink it down. I pull on some clean clothes and lie on the bed curled up on my side, waiting for the drug to start working, patient and dumb and desperate as a dog waiting by the door. When it finally seeps its way over the length of my bloodstream, I sit up again and feel the hangover pain fall away like dripping water. Outside, the sun is low and orange on the horizon. I still have time before nightfall, before the meeting. I set out for town.

Nobody answers the doctor’s doorbell after three rings. I let long swaths of time pass between each pull of the chain, standing still and listening while minutes flow around me like a river. There must have been more than a teaspoon of the rose hellebore extract in that glass. I reach to pull the chain a fourth time, but I become distracted looking at the way my hand pushes through space toward the doorbell, moving from the glint of the orange sunset and into the shade. I’m staring at my arm held aloft, contemplating the dichotomy between light and shadow, when the door swings open. I drop my hand. “Doctor.”

He stares at me without any of the false pretenses of pleasantries he upheld before, and without any acknowledgment of the intimacy of our previous encounters. “What can I do for you,” he demands flatly.

I’m caught off guard by the annoyance in his voice. I’m not sure if I honestly expected a warm welcome, or if it’s my leftover affection-starved tendencies, piqued and left hanging back in the conference room, still seeking comfort. Maybe it’s just the drug. I do my best to shake it off. “Doctor, I just came to ask about the status of the project. That you promised you’d work on for me.” I know I sound like a wheedling, demanding child, but there’s nothing I can do to stop the words and fix them.

He glances around, then sharply reverses the gears of the wheelchair and rolls back a few feet. He jerks his head to one side. “ _Please_ do come in,” he snaps in a voice heavy with impatience and sarcasm. I hover on the doorstep just a moment too long for him; he reaches out and grabs me by the wrist, yanks me through the door. His strength shocks me into silence. Where was that strength when I pinned his arms down and rode him, dragging his climax from him exactly how and when I designed? I can feel my confidence start to deflate from me like a leaky balloon. I thought I was so clever, so in command. I stand there staring at him, unable to speak.

He slams the door. “Please understand, I can _not_ be seen with you loitering around my doorway. If you want my cooperation as an accessory to your felony, we must not associate. There is no good reason for you to appear here. People will know that. They will know.”

“I’m sure there are lots of good reasons for me to show up at your house. Maybe I need a prosthetic eyeball. Maybe I need an abortion.”

He shakes his head. His disdain for me rises like noxious gas.

“Maybe I’m volunteering as a laboratory test subject,” I continue. “Maybe you and Sally wanted to try a threesome.”

“Be quiet,” he snaps.

“All I’m saying is, people won’t see me at your door and automatically say, _Oh look, Doctor Finklestein is inventing some poison for Shock, isn’t that nice. Sure is sweet of him to help her murder her boss._ ” 

“I said be _quiet_.” He glances around the room as if he expects hidden cameras all around us. “I told you I would send for you. I told you to exercise caution. The fact that you can’t seem to comprehend how _astronomically_ high the risks are here makes me wonder if I made the wrong decision when I agreed to help you.” 

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and make my best effort to get it together. “No, I’m sorry. I understand the risks.”

He looks skeptical.

“I’m taking this very seriously. I am. I’m just a little bit exhausted, I’m sorry, it’s been a rough day.” I give him my best big-eyed expression of weariness. “But I’m serious. I’m cautious.”

“The _moment_ I suspect you are being too reckless and flippant to handle this, I shall withdraw my agreement. I shall not risk my entire career for this.”

Of course not. My life is not worth a fraction of his illustrious reputation. “I understand.”

“I am working on this as quickly as my schedule allows. Please understand I am always balancing many projects at once. Not to _mention_ other challenging circumstances I am currently dealing with.”

I know he must mean Sally, dosing him with the nightshade plants, disappearing for days at a time to skulk around the city like an overgrown, walleyed toddler. How her betrayals must hurt him, he who is so proud of his impeccably operating creations. I don’t reply.

“The problem we are encountering with the parameters of this task,” he continues, as his voice takes on its didactic tone, “is mainly due to the wide blocks of unknowns we are dealing with. So we have to cover all possibilities. We need a pesticide, yes, but it can’t be the slow-spreading, subtly building types used in many households. We need something that will act instantaneously and encompass all the pests contained within the unit at once. Something unlike the acephate in bait traps or the pyrethroids in fogs. Those would allow a reaction time that could render the whole operation a total failure. Since we aren’t sure if a partial destruction would be effective or if we need one hundred percent annihilation, we have to assume we need to achieve total eradication of all members of the body. That leads us to our second problem, which is how to be certain the poisoning agent can penetrate through the outside epidermal layer in order to affect every pest inside. We can speculate about exactly how porous the outer material is – you may be able to give me some firsthand insight, and I am well versed in the field of living textiles – but without the ability to perform a detailed chemical analysis on a sample, it’s only speculation, and speculation can be very dangerous indeed. So here we have to assume we’ll need to burn away the outer material to deliver the poison to the pests within. So as we will now be dealing with a corrosive acid as well, that complicates the portability and delivery, not to mention the volatility of the chemical combinations –”

“All right, I get it.” I feel starved for air in this flood of information.

“No, you _don’t_ get it,” he snaps. “And I’m only just getting started in describing the obstacles we are facing. Do not misunderstand me, I appreciate a good challenge, and the answer is well within my grasp. But if you’re wondering why I haven’t delivered a simple solution to your doorstep already, _please_ appreciate the magnitude of what I am accomplishing for you." 

“I appreciate it.” I hold up my hands in placating surrender. “I appreciate it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was rushing you.” 

“Like I assured you, I will contact you when I have something for you. Until then, I think it’s best if we do not communicate.”

I nod. I wring my hands in front of me as I mentally prepare my next question.

He heaves an annoyed sigh. “And is there anything _else_ I can do for you?”

“I need more of the rose hellebore extract,” I mumble.

He blinks at me from behind his dark glasses, and he takes a long beat before he speaks again. “You most certainly do _not_ need more. Did you read the instructions? One teaspoon per twenty-four hour period? Do you know how many teaspoons were in the bottle?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Forty-eight. That is a six-week supply, assuming it’s needed _every_ day. So you’ve already enjoyed six weeks’ worth of it, have you?”

“ _No._ ”

“I’m a fool to entrust a controlled substance into your hands. Kids like you would lick the ground if someone dribbled drugs on it. I’m getting too soft-hearted, thinking I would be helping you out with palliative care in the meantime. Thinking you’d take it as needed.”

 _It is needed,_ I want to protest. But those words sound desperate and dysfunctional even just in my head, and I bite my cheeks to keep them inside me.

“Or perhaps you’re not chugging it all down by yourself. Maybe you’re passing the bottle around to your brothers and having a grand old time. Or, more likely, maybe you’re selling it dose by dose to the local townschildren. A nice little lemonade stand scheme.”

“ _No,_ I’m _not._ ”

“I am already hanging my career and my good name on a rope in your hands just by putting together this insecticide for you. If you for one _moment_ think I am going to hand over a steady supply of opioids for your recreational use – or worse, for _distribution_ – you must be insane.” He jerks his chair into gear, wheeling backward for a three-point turn, then veering off toward the ramp, still ranting at me. “You can buy your smack off the street and shoot it into your veins like a common junkie for all I care, cook your own on a bunsen burner in your bedroom, but you will _not_ be getting it from _me_. Honestly, to think I imagined I was doing you some sort of _kindness_ by giving you painkillers. A mistake I will _not_ be repeating. You can see yourself out. I will be in touch.” He disappears around the curve at the top of the ramp, and a heavy slam of a door punctuates the conclusion of his tirade.

I stand in the deserted foyer and stare up the ramp where he has disappeared, listening to the echoes of his words as they bump around in my brain like bugs in a jar. I should feel chastened, embarrassed, repentant. But the pillowy haze of the rose hellebore affords me little room to maneuver toward those weighty emotions. I turn to the door and struggle with the heavy latch, and I mull over the things he said. I like the idea of brewing my own, but that’s out of the question. I’ve never done anything more complicated than distilling a few leaves; cooking volatile chemical compounds would likely blow the treehouse sky-high. But he’s right, there are places other than a doctor’s office to find what I’m looking for. I slip outside and let the door behind me slam shut with a crash.

The sun’s last edge has just dipped below the hills in the distance. Across the liquid blue sky, a cloud of bats flutters up and scatters like dust. The wind picks up and pushes my hair off my shoulders, tugs at my dress. Across the square I can see a crowd already beginning to form outside City Hall, citizens lining up to listen to whatever Jack and the Mayor deem important these days. I take the long way around the square to give the crowd time to thin out and settle in. I lean against a lamppost across the street and listen to the tolling from the belltower; the mournful tones of the irregular clanging sound so poignant to my drugged brain that I can almost anthropomorphize the sounds, relate to the harrowing song the bell sings. This music understands me, this is who I am: a clanging instrument trapped in His tower, powerlessly tolling out myself as the yanking rope pulls the music out of me. I begin losing myself in an illogical scheme to steal the bell out of the tower and take it with me, but then I’m snapped back to reality when a figure hurries right past me under the lamppost, heading toward City Hall. It’s the Harlequin Demon tripping along on delicate feet, his tentacles flying in the breeze as he hurries. My heart speeds up. He is the most prominent dealer of Rosie, the street form of the rose hellebore in its refined, smokeable, snortable, shootable powder. I can’t believe my luck. I step toward him. “Hey.”

He squawks in surprise and jumps as he whirls around. “What? What do you want?” he demands, eyes round with fear.

He must think I’m here to mug him, that my brothers are crouching nearby in ambush. I hold my empty hands up and step out into the spill of lamplight. “It’s okay, I just have a question for you.”

At the light’s edge, half swathed in shadow, he shifts his feet and grinds his fangs. He inches with tiny steps farther away from me. “Yeah? Hurry up. The meeting is about to start and Dev is supposed to be saving me a good seat.”

“Okay. I want to buy some Rosie from you.”

He sputters, ruffles his feathers, puts his hands on his hips like an indignant, scandalized old lady. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I have never _touched_ that stuff.”

“Oh please. Do you really think I’m some kind of narc? Cut the crap.”

He narrows his eyes at me and drops his hands. “This isn’t for your boss, is it? That isn’t really his game.”

“No.”

“Oh, this is for _you_? Does Mister Oogie know one of his pet thugs is out on the street trying to score a hit?”

I cross my arms and scowl. “I don’t see how that’s relevant. How much?”

He starts laughing, a shrill and birdlike sound that grates against my ears. “ _Oh_ no. You think I want to be held responsible when your boss starts tearing the town apart trying to find out who hooked his little princess on Rosie? He would batter and fry me. Besides,” he gives a smug smirk, “I _highly_ doubt you could afford it.”

“Hmm. Well.” I take a step forward. He takes two steps back. “I’m sure we could arrange other means of payment.”

“ _Oh_ no you don’t. _So_ very many layers of wrongness with that arrangement.” His laughter has a terrified, slightly hysterical edge. “I’m just minding my own business here, trying to go do my civic duty and attend this meeting, and here I get propositioned by the underage pet hooligan belonging to the gambling syndicate’s kingpin, asking me to _fuck_ her and hook her up with needle drugs? This just has to be a setup, this doesn’t happen in real life.” He looks around, eyes wide in anxiety.

I take a step back and hold up my hands again. “Chill. This isn’t a setup. I’m just out shopping.”

With the safer distance between us, he seems to calm down a notch. “Look. I’m just the middleman. I get my supply from the witches. They cook the smack. I only sell it. If you’re that desperate you should talk to them. I don’t know if they’ll bite, but it’s worth a try. Maybe they’ll be more interested in your alternative payment methods than _I_ am. You need to learn how to read your audience. Now, if you were offering that sweet-ass brother of yours, maybe we could have had a deal.” His smile fades at the look on my face. “I kid, I kid, I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole either.   It doesn’t matter how sweet his little forked-tail ass looks in those tight little red pants. Your boss would _flay_ me.” He backs away a few steps further, glances around in all directions. “I’m late, I’m gonna lose my goddamn seat. Good luck, princess.” He turns and scurries in the direction of City Hall.

I lean up against the lamppost again and close my eyes. What unsettles me most about that unsavory encounter is how, if I had thought of it first, I might have considered selling Lock out for half a gram. I stare up at the clouds swirling in the gathering dark and I count out a minute, then another minute more, to put a buffer of time between myself and the Harlequin Demon. He won’t want to be seen anywhere near me. Then I set out in the direction in which he disappeared.

The last of the crowd is still filing in through the doors when I arrive at City Hall, and the bell’s tolling has just ceased. I slip in at the end and wind my way against the back wall around the crowd to try to find an inconspicuous place behind everyone else. I duck into the last chair in the corner and look out at the buzz of activity all over the room. There’s Clarence on his unicycle, unsteady with his new adapter but more manic than ever, squealing around and startling people. He is obviously on something. I can glimpse into a window of his future so clearly – dependence on the pain meds he took to recover from the injury, a growing need for greater and greater quantities of alcohol to drown out the trauma from the experience, an eventual decline into liver failure and a slow, undignified final demise. Oogie gets the last laugh as always. It wouldn’t be the first time for this scenario.

I watch Sally creep down the aisle like a deer scenting hunters, finally hoisting herself up into the branches of the Hanging Tree and dangling her legs daintily down. I watch the two witches zoom in on their broomsticks, knocking off hats and sideswiping bystanders as they go. Everyone buzzes with post-Halloween excitement – talking, laughing, milling around like this is some kind of cocktail party instead of a town meeting. I slouch down low in my seat and try my best to blend in with the wall.

Two figures inch down the row and claim the two seats to my right. I shrink even further down, but they look my way only once with total lack of interest. When they are occupied with chatting with each other, I sneak a glance up and then force my eyes away before they can feel me looking.   The one next to me is dressed like one of the witches, but she doesn’t carry a broom. Her face is a dizzying optical illusion – ancient as an old crone at first glance, young and glamorous from another angle. It takes all my willpower to keep from staring, to watch her youth flicker and disappear across the planes of her face like the northern lights. Next to her sits a reaper, shrouded in black. I have never had dealings with either of them; they aren’t the kind of people who frequent the Underground.

The woman cups one hand in front of her, low and inconspicuous on her lap, and gives a little twist of her wrist. In the center of her palm appears a small brown object, like a pebble or a tiny bug. She flexes her fingers and the brown speck shimmers; light swirls around it as it swells and expands and changes color. I watch from the corner of my eye, staring nonchalantly ahead, my breath caught in my chest at the sheer beauty of it. It turns red and fat and round in her hand, and when it settles into her palm and the sparks of light fade away I can see it is an apple, ripe and perfect. She offers it to the reaper next to her, who accepts it gratefully in his long, skeletal fingers. At his touch the apple shrives and fades until it resembles a rotten ghost of its former self. He pulls his hood back just a bit to take a bite. His face behind the hood is grey and ageless, his eyes blank and empty like a marble sculpture. He smiles fondly at her as he eats. She cups her hand and twists her wrist again, conjures the light to make another apple, which she holds in her hand but doesn’t yet start to eat.

In the row in front of me, the Behemoth plops down directly in my line of sight to the stage. I squirm to one side and then to the other as Jack Skellington appears from the wings. The spotlight flickers to life and illuminates his movements as he crosses to the podium and starts recounting some insane traveling experience. In the fog of the rose hellebore I’m having a difficult time comprehending exactly what he’s talking about, but the pictures he paints with his words materialize in my brain like candy-coated dreams. I could sit and watch his graceful hands for hours as they float like airborne spiders, punctuating the melodious lines of his words like dynamic markings on sheet music. If only the audience members would quit inserting their stupid questions and assertations and just let him speak. I want to close my eyes and let the sound of his words wash over me, but I don’t want to miss a moment of his movements across the stage. I picture making the rest of the crowd vanish from existence, then climbing onto the tinsel-bedecked set with him as he explains these concepts to me alone. _A box, with bright-colored paper_ , he would say, gathering me into his lap so we could examine it more closely, _and the whole thing’s topped with a bow._  

I would lean my back up against his chest as I turn the box over in my hands, feeling the warmth of my body’s heat seep through the fabric of his suit and into the cold chill of his bones beneath. _What’s in it?_ I would ask.

He would slide his long fingers over my chest as he wraps his arms around me, holds me close. _Why don’t we unwrap it,_ he’d whisper in my ear, _and we could find out?_

In the disappointing reality, the crowd heckles him with their stupid questions as they snatch the objects out of his hands, offer up their own ignorant hypotheses, argue among each other about these concepts that they’re obviously unequipped to comprehend. I watch Jack grow increasingly frustrated with their response but hide it so masterfully, masking it with a seemingly endless wellspring of patience and charisma. His approach enthralls me. Oogie would have started injuring people as an example to others by now. At least His crowd control would have been far more effective than this.

Beside me, the beautiful old witch grows restless, reacting to Jack with quiet little sighs as if she is trying to contain herself. Finally she turns to the reaper next to her and whispers loudly enough for me to hear, “What does he think he’s doing?”

“He has no idea what he is doing,” says the reaper. His voice is so deep it purrs inside my bone marrow.

“He’s contaminating the symbols,” she whispers. “He’s changing things inorganically. This is going to alter everything at its very core.” Her voice increases in volume until the person in front of her glances back accusingly.

The reaper reaches out and rubs her arm. “Shh. It’s not as bad as all that. The pendulum will swing back. It always does.”

I feel perplexed and wish I had concentrated more on the actual message he’s been delivering and less on his lithe, sensual body. Is he talking about replacing our traditions with these baubles and bows? It’s all too foreign; nobody will go for it. The Mayor seems enthused enough, however, and I wish he would fall out of the followspot alcove and break his neck on the crowd below, maybe take out an idiotic townsperson or two on his way down.

Jack launches into a more ominous description of a Christmas monster, and I relax a little in the comfort of this theme’s familiarity. Whatever he was talking about before made no sense – beauty for the sake of aesthetic beauty alone; anticipation in delight instead of dread; gifts without strings. The audience seems to feel the same way and their rowdy behavior quiets down into engrossed attention. The beautiful witch and the reaper stand and exit the row while Jack is still presenting. The curtain closes behind him when he has finished, and as the house lights turn back on, the crowd stands up and starts to mill around and talk excitedly. I want to slip backstage and find Jack, ask him more questions about his confusing stories, find out what exactly was in that box. Why didn’t he open it and show us? The nagging, incomplete feeling is going to haunt me for days.

I wish I had taken the lead of the reaper and the woman, that I had left under cover of darkness and kept my anonymity intact. It’s too late now, so I squeeze out of the row of seats and do my best to skirt around the thick of the crowd, keep close to the wall. As I pass by a darkened hallway, a hand reaches out and grabs me by the elbow, yanks me inside. A scream rises up in my throat, but I swallow it back down when in the dark I recognize the glowing red eyes belonging to the Harlequin Demon. He presses his finger to his lips as he drags me through the hallway and into a nearby coat closet. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to scare you. God, you’re so easy to abduct. You didn’t even scream. You just went along with me.”

“Some animals wait until they’re in close range before they bite.”

He snorts. “Sure, princess. And _some_ animals are too smart to bite the hand that feeds ‘em.”

“I don’t recall receiving anything from _you_." 

“Yet. Keep your voice down.” He looks over both shoulders and licks his lips. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all through that stupid meeting. I mean, it’s not like you’re asking me for some kind of weapon of mass destruction. Rosie’s just a little escape. And if anyone needs a little escape, it’s gotta be you. I mean, we all specialize in Ordinary nightmares. And your boss is the guy who lives in _our_ nightmares. And you live with him.” He shudders. “I mean, I can’t offer a steady supply. This is a one-time deal. But I don’t think I could sleep at night knowing I didn’t at least give you a little something to get through a rough day.” He grabs me by the wrist and presses something small into my palm. “You tell _no one_. You didn’t get this from me.” 

“Okay.” I slip it into my pocket.

“And you remember me if my number ever comes up, you understand?” His voice rises in pitch and desperation. “If I’m ever on your little collection list, you just remember when I helped you out in your time of need.”

As if that’s something I could ever promise. As if a line or two of Rosie is worth a lifetime of immunity. “Of course.”

“Great. Okay. I never saw you tonight, I’ve never talked to you before.” He peers out into the dark hallway, seems to relax when he sees it is still deserted. “Give me a five-minute start.” He scurries out in an anxious flutter of feathers.

I lean back against the closet wall. I have no intention of standing around idle in here for a full five minutes – someone is likely to happen in at any time – but I wait a respectable interval before I creep back out. The crowd is almost dispersed completely by the time I exit. Someone bumps into me and almost knocks me down. I look up at the figure casting a shadow over me. A round globe of a body stuffed in yellow polka dots. Over the curvature of his obese gut, the clown’s head gapes down at me. The color drains from his face and his mouth flops open. He tips, loses his balance. I take a step backward and watch him fall. 

On the ground, he fumbles with the catch on the unicycle adapter. His remaining foot is entangled in the wheel spokes and twisted at an awkward angle. His size makes it difficult to reach the adapter’s release, but with his eyes locked on me and his hands trembling so violently, it looks nearly impossible. His breathing is rapid and he emits a little high-pitched whine with every exhale. I just stand there and watch him struggle. His terror fills me with a billowing feeling of power, spreading warm through my body like clouds of ink through water. I want to stand here and draw it out as long as it will go, but I have a report to make and a tiny gift burning a hole in my pocket. I give the clown a menacing smirk and walk out of City Hall, out into the dark evening and up to the treehouse.

I knock on the conference room door, and Barrel opens it. He carries a length of razor wire rolled up on his arm. “What are you – ” I start to ask, but Barrel jerks his head in the direction behind him. I look past him to see Lock on his hands and knees below the spot where the meathook hangs, a bucket of sudsy water at his side, a bristle brush in his hand, working the soap over the blood-splattered cement floor. Behind him, Oogie leans against the wall, ostensibly watching him work. The predatory leer on His face as he watches Lock makes me nauseous.   Lock glances up at my approach, then back down at the floor without pausing in his efforts. Oogie stands up straighter and turns his leering smile on me instead. “Well, look who’s returned from her espionage mission. Look how your thoughtful brothers have done all these chores for you in your absence. What do you think about that act of generosity, princess?” He leans down and smacks Lock on the ass. Lock pitches forward and almost knocks over the bucket. Oogie roars with laughter. “So, little darlin’, everything copacetic out in the greasy world of small-town politics?”

“Um, I think so. Jack Skellington wants to introduce new holiday traditions. It involves giving presents.”

He throws back His head and barks out a laugh. “I got some _presents_ I’d like to give that histrionic motherfucker. Oooh, he is gonna throw a wrench into the city’s operations with this shit. It’s gonna be pure chaos.” He turns and walks toward the back rooms. “Good work, baby. You go on and relax. The boys’ll finish up this mess for you. Won’t you, boys?”

“Yes, sir,” they mumble.

He yawns expansively and then disappears down the back hall without another word.

For a moment I stand there in silence, listening to Lock’s brush bristles rub against the floor, to Barrel’s clanking as he rolls up another length of chain to hang it back on the wall. Then I reach into Lock’s bucket and pull out a second scrub brush, take it over to the chopping block and start in on the gory remains over there.

“What are you doing?” Lock snaps in a low voice.

“Helping?”  


“He told you to relax. Who do you think’s gonna get it if He finds out you’re doing our work for us? Not you.”

I toss the brush onto the chopping block, into the small puddle of soap already foaming up in the bloody residue. “Well, excuse me for trying to be of assistance.”

Barrel struggles on tiptoe to reach the hanging hooks for the rolled lengths of chain. “Please,” he says, barely above a whisper, “He’s happy, He’s eaten, He’s been fully sated, let’s just say you helped out enough for one day.”

My tongue and lips, still fuzzy and burnt from earlier, tingle to life at the acknowledgment. “He looked like He was gearing up again. You shouldn't wiggle your ass so much while you scrub, Lock.”

He glares up at me. Behind the meanness of his scowl, he looks like he is on the verge of tears. He looks back down at the floor before I can tell for sure. “Fuck you,” he mumbles. “Go on and _relax_ like He told you to. Before He comes back.” His scrubbing motions are much stiffer now as he makes a clear effort to keep his spine locked as he moves his arm.

I try to meet Barrel’s eye as I walk past him, but he looks pointedly away from me and down at the chain he’s rolling into even lengths for storage. Their anger toward me is completely misplaced, and it stings. They think He is playing favorites, picking a teacher’s pet, just because they received unsavory tasks to complete today. They don’t seem to understand how He is setting me up, balancing me onto a tenuous pedestal of false security, tethering me there by just scarcely feeding my thirst for tenderness. His endgame is much longer than who has to scrub the bloodstains.

Back up in my room, I lean back against the door and close my eyes, revel in the silence and the solitude. Then I pull the gift from the Harlequin Demon out of my pocket. It’s a square foil packet, smaller than a postage stamp, plump with hidden promise. I take it over to the shelf and clear a space on the top, then unwrap the packet without breathing. Inside is an inner layer of parchment paper. I peel it open corner by corner like a flower blooming. Within the center is a small pile of brown-pink powder. I want to spread it all out into a long line and suck it up into my nose all at once, but that would be a terrible idea. Without knowing the exact makeup and concentration, I could be dead by morning. I pick up a small pinch between my thumb and forefinger and sniff it up, then another pinch for the other side. I fold the parchment paper back up and seal the square of foil around it with extravagant care, creasing the sides into edges more crisp and even than they were when the demon gave it to me. Then I curl up on the bed and gaze out the window while I wait for it to take hold.

I don’t know what I expect – sparks flying, music swelling, sudden epiphanies to all the puzzles of the universe. Instead it’s so subtle I can’t even pinpoint when it started. The feeling of calm creeps up through my body cell by cell until all at once it’s clear it is working. I sink down into the mattress and stare through the window into the night sky. The clouds have cleared, leaving a paint-spatter of constellations behind. I lie so still and stare so steadily I can track their infinitesimal movements as they follow their curving paths toward morning.

As the sky pales and the traveling constellations fade away, I feel myself start to come down. The warm contentment leaks away from me, leaving behind an itchy, nauseous residue across my whole body. The rising sun burns, and only my aching and watering eyes can motivate me out of the comedown and up to the window to pull the curtain. Upright in the dark, the dizziness takes hold of me, a vertigo so complete and convincing I have to grab the wall to check that it’s not actually spinning. One hand on the wall for guidance, I make my careful way across the room to the shelf and the little foil packet, which I take my time unwrapping with my half-numb fingers. I rationalize that I only did a little test before. It doesn’t count as a second dose yet. I do a larger bump on one side of my nose, then the other, and I lie back down. It seems to work much more quickly this time, riding on the coattails of the leftover traces of Rosie that still course through my system. Without the stars in the window to guide me along the passage of time, I can’t even fathom the minutes are slipping by. My brain sinks deeper in on itself like a turtle retreating beneath its shell. Before I notice what’s happening, I nod off. There are no dreams.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Footsteps pound up and down the hallway and rattle the walls of my room. I can see the curtains fluttering, watch the vibrations travel through the liquid in the bottles on the shelf. What could they be doing out there? I glance in the mirror at my unfamiliar reflection – my hair more matted than usual, the dark circles under my eyes like bruises from a bar brawl. My whole face is drawn and puckered from the nausea that rolls over me. If I didn’t know I was looking into a mirror, I may not have recognized myself. I run my hands through my hair, pull on my hat with the brim low over my forehead. Then I open the bedroom door.

Just around the corner, I catch a glimpse of Lock racing past and disappearing, skidding along the wood floor in his socks. Barrel, dressed only in underpants and wearing a colander on his head like a helmet, leans around his doorway into the hall with a slingshot at the ready. He loads his weapon with a giant jawbreaker as big as his fist and aims it at the corner where Lock disappeared.

I step out of the door. “What the hell are you doing?”

Barrel jumps and shrieks, fumbles the slingshot, drops the jawbreaker on the floor. It crumbles into two jagged halves. “Holy crap. You scared me.” He clutches melodramatically at his chest. “We thought you were still sleeping. Holy crap.”

“Quit being such a drama queen. How the hell could I possibly sleep with all the noise you little gremlins are making?”

Barrel bends to retrieve the dropped slingshot and the two shattered pieces of jawbreaker. Behind him, I watch Lock peer back around the corner, take careful aim with his own slingshot at Barrel’s upturned backside, and fire. Barrel shrieks again as the ammunition hits home, whirls around. “Goddammit, not fair, she distracted me!”

Lock pockets his slingshot like a gunslinger holstering his revolver. “Hey, all’s fair in love and war, sweet cheeks.”

“You faggoty asshole, you’re such a cheater!” Barrel launches himself at Lock like a tiny charging buffalo, and they both go down in a flurry of fists and cursing.

My head throbs, and the nausea pounds through me like a relentless machine. I reach down and grab the two broken jawbreaker pieces and hurl them at my brothers. One piece bounces off Barrel’s cheek; the other nails Lock square in the back of the head. They both cry out and break away from each other, rubbing their injuries and looking at me with betrayed expressions.

“I have a fucking headache and I need you two to shut the fuck up,” I hiss.

Barrel picks up the jawbreaker that hit Lock, snaps a shard off the broken edge and pops it into his mouth. “Jeez, you’d think someone who slept as long as you just did would wake up happy and fresh as a daisy. You’re bitchier than you were thirty-six hours ago.”

Lock snorts. “You think she was up there catching up on her beauty sleep? Dumbass. She was probably drinking homebrew hooch straight out of the jug. She’s hungover as fuck.”

I look steadily back at them, my best poker face in place, but in my head I’m struggling to compute the sum total of hours I’ve apparently lost to the Rosie bender. “I’m just politely asking you to please kill each other a little more quietly.”

“Actually,” says Lock, “I was going to come wake you up anyway. We’ve been _summoned_ by Jack Skellington.” He holds up a small piece of notepaper.

“We’ve been _what_? Give me that.” Barrel jumps for the paper but Lock holds it high over his head, out of his reach. While they grapple I calmly reach up and snag it out of Lock’s hand.

 _Lock, Shock, and Barrel,_ it reads in jagged, flowing script. _Please convene at Town Hall this afternoon to receive your new holiday assignments. J.S._

I trace my fingers over his initials, at the ornamental spirals accenting the spiky lines. The handwriting is flung across the small paper in a flurried rush, but still it echoes the grace and poise he embodies. I read the words over and over again. I’ve never seen his handwriting before. It gives me the same sensation I felt when staring into his living room window from my hidden perch in the tree.

“What the hell does it _say_?” Barrel exclaims. He finally breaks free of Lock and grabs the note from me.

“Are you zoned out or what?” Lock asks me. “How long does it take you to read one sentence?”

“What does he mean, new assignments?” Barrel asks. He lets the note flutter to the ground like meaningless litter, and he takes the colander off his head.

“Go put your clothes on, wanker.”

Barrel gives Lock the finger and turns to me. “But what does he _mean_ , new assignments?”

I rub my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“But you went to the meeting, what did he say? Did he give you a hint?”

Lock marches into Barrel’s room and emerges with a wadded up bundle of dirty clothes. He flings it at Barrel. “Just get dressed so we can go already.”

Barrel slowly turns the wrinkled shirt right-side out. “Do you think it still involves candy? He’s not altering tradition _that_ much, is he? He wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh my god.” Lock snatches the shirt from Barrel and jams it over his head, then grabs the pants. “It’s going to involve you getting punched in the fucking face if you don’t hurry up.”

While they wrestle over the clothes, I reach down and retrieve Barrel’s slingshot. The movement sets off the sense of vertigo again, but I keep my eyes steady and pretend it isn’t happening.   I don’t want them to find out what I have been up to; if they disapprove so vehemently of a harmless little nightshade joint, I don’t want to find out what they would say if they discovered what I’ve been snorting. I break away from them and make my way down to the kitchen, rummage through the stores until I find a jar of wolfmint leaves. Their bitter stench makes me shudder, but they’re supposed to be good for nausea. I chew on a leaf for a minute to extract the oils, then spit it out into the garbage. I can’t tell if it helped at all.

The boys come down, Barrel finally dressed, Lock looking disheveled and annoyed. He waits with his arms crossed while Barrel detours to the cupboard and digs around, humming leisurely as if he has all the time in the world.

I spit again into the garbage, but the bitter wolfmint taste remains. “Barrel, are you actively trying to get him to kick your ass?”

Barrel ignores me, holds two lollipops up to the light, pockets them both.

“He’s trying to get me back for winning the slingshot war,” says Lock. His voice is haughty, overly affected, as if he is trying to sound older and sager than he’s capable of. “It must be so challenging to be the most inept one in the group. Poor guy.”

Barrel doesn’t look up as he sticks his hand into a jar of saltwater taffy. He starts humming tunelessly, then singing. “ _Fuck you, asshole,_ ” he sings. “ _Fuck you right in the ass you enormous dickbag_.” He puts the jar down and rummages in a bag behind it.

“You two are literally killing me,” I snap. “I’m going. You can walk well behind me if you’re going to be so obnoxious.” I stalk out of the kitchen without looking back.

I make it all the way out of the house and down the walk before I hear them coming after me in a scramble of footsteps and indistinct voices. Barrel catches up first, out of breath from jogging. “Wait,” he pants, “wait.” He grabs my wrist and, before I can wrench my arm away, puts something into my hand.

I look down, fully expecting the worst. But it’s only a round little disc of peppermint candy. I stop walking and stare at Barrel. He smiles and keeps going. Behind us Lock finally approaches and the two fall into step side by side as if the fighting earlier was all a figment of my imagination. I pull at the twisted ends of the cellophane and unwrap the candy, slide it into my mouth. The sweet mint flavor instantly neutralizes the nausea. The rush of gratitude and fondness that overtakes me makes my heart race and my eyes water with tears. I pretend to fix my hat while swiping the backs of my hands against my eyes.

When we come around the corner to the Square, the sight of the crowd stops us all in our tracks. “What the shit?” says Lock as we stare at the queue of patient town residents snaking around the fountain and up through the entrance of City Hall. Barrel lets out a low whistle. “This is going to take hours, like literally _hours_.”

The enormity of it all – the swarm of people, the endless looming wait, the anxiety of the unknown assignment for which we’ve been summoned – crushes against my brain like the pressing walls of a coffin. I am so tired, so swamped with the sadness of the Rosie comedown, it feels like rocks in my pockets pulling me down underwater and anchoring me in the dark depths. I ache for another little bump of the powder to buoy me back up, to make this whole ridiculous farce bearable. I crunch down on the peppermint candy Barrel gave me, feeling it shatter into sticky shards between my grinding teeth.

In the line, the townspeople mostly stare directly ahead as they wait like the mindless followers they are. A few chat in small pockets of conversation, but for the most part they are subdued as crated livestock. The undead corpse child attempts to wander off at a lumbering, slow sprint, but the choke chain around his neck tightens as his mother yanks him back with one indifferent hand, as her other hand holds a cigarette limply up to her lips. A werewolf glances around, then nonchalantly unzips his fly and relieves himself against a lamppost. The loudspeaker buzzes to life with the Mayor’s droning voice – “Doctor Finklestein to the front of the line!” – and I see Sally shrink from her spot in the queue and disappear around the back of the fountain as the doctor’s chair whirs up the walk. He looks wan and annoyed, glancing around him, on obvious high alert. I feel a stab of pity for him. How often is she knocking him out with her poison? Does she think his body can withstand that kind of abuse indefinitely? He fails to spot her in her hiding place behind the fountain, and he continues up the wheelchair ramp and into the building. Only when he disappears inside does she slip back out and rejoin her place in the line.

We wait a few moments more – Lock shifting his weight and glancing all around the crowd with watchful eyes, Barrel leaned back on his heels and insolently crunching hard candy with his mouth open. I try not to sway on my feet, but the nausea seems to abate a little if I’m in motion. The line doesn’t move.

At last, Lock gives a melodramatic sigh. “This is stupid. Come on.”

I try to hide my relief as I hurry along beside him. We push past the obediently queuing townspeople, who either shrink back at our approach or cluck disapprovingly as we pass. The undead corpse mother mutters something in our wake, and Barrel and Lock both flip her off. “Suck it, you fat bitch,” Lock murmurs as we pass. I ignore her, my eyes ahead as I concentrate on each laborious step.

We push through into the building and into the main meeting room. It’s a wreck in here, an explosion of random Christmas artifacts.   In the corner, a quartet of vampires peels the clothes off a smiling toy baby. A werewolf shoves past them with an enormous crate filled with candy canes. The doctor wheels himself across the stage, a book in his lap. He gives me a silent nod as we approach, and my heartbeat quickens.

Lock reaches into Barrel’s pockets as we start to climb the stairs to the stage where Jack and the Mayor hold court. Barrel tries halfheartedly to squirm out of reach, but Lock is already pulling out another giant jawbreaker, a handful of bits of bone and small rocks, little magpie treasures from his compulsive collecting habit. Barrel doesn’t protest as Lock pushes a handful of the junk at me, then loads the jawbreaker into his slingshot and lets it fly. I do the same with the broken bone pieces, the jagged grey stones. The Mayor shrieks and recoils under the sudden attack, and I smile in spite of the steady pounding in my head.

“What are _you_ doing here?” he demands. Any pretense of authority he’s trying to cling to crumbles. I smile wider. His blatant cowering at our presence sends a trill of pleasure through me, and the fog in my head lifts for a brief moment as I revel in the power we have. Just standing here, grinning up at him, we’ve stripped him of all his pomp and pretense and reduced him to nothing but the barest elements of fear.

“Ah, Halloween’s finest trick-or-treaters,” Jack cries, beaming. He kneels before us, spreading his arms wide. With tentative steps we move in closer, ever wary. When his fingers brush across my back, my face burns hot. I shrink back away from him an undetectable inch or two so he won’t make contact again. “The job I have for you is top secret. It requires craft, cunning, mischief.” He grins down at us with a conspiratorial light in his eyes that sends a shiver down my spine.

“And we thought you didn’t like us, Jack,” I simper, ducking my head coquettishly and staring up at him with blowjob eyes. The boys snicker.

Jack ignores my innuendo. “Absolutely no one is to know about it – not a _soul_. Now.” He pulls Lock closer by the arm and both boys huddle in more tightly to hear his whispered words, but I hang back. Here on his knees before me is just how he knelt on his own living room floor as he hoisted the skirts of his vampiress visitor and fucked her in front of his fireplace. My eyes sink closed as I remember the disgust on her face as she reluctantly sucked him, and a flash of indignant fury wells up inside me of the chances I will never have. I force my eyes open again and pay attention to his instructions.

“…colorful decorations all over it. Rainbow baubles, things like that. It leads to Christmas Town. Once inside, his office is just toward the edge of town. You’ll convince him to come back with you, by any means necessary, if you have to. Bring him to me.”

The boys are squirming where they stand, antsy with the prospect of mischief of this magnitude officially sanctioned by the town government. They glance at each other, eager to rush off and begin committing felonious acts with no consequences. Lock starts off, but Jack grabs him by the tail and drags him back. “And one more thing.” Jack’s voice darkens into a menacing growl that turns my insides cold with familiar dread. “Leave that no-account Oogie Boogie _out_ of this.”

The three of us all take a collective beat, hold our breaths just an instant before answering. His tone is a tiny window into his ability to slide from kindness into danger at a moment’s notice, and it reminds us we are not far from home at all. Little wonder Jack and Oogie see each other as rivals; they are so alike. I feel the cold sensation of stripped-away illusions.

Barrel regains his voice first. “Whatever you say, _Jack_ ,” he smirks with an impertinence he would never dare use at home.

“Of course, Jack,” I breathe, and look away.

“Wouldn’t _dream_ of it, Jack!” says Lock in his speech-giving voice, loud enough for the people in line behind us to overhear. I slip my hand behind my back and cross my fingers. I will not enter into allegiance with him. Our verbal contract is moot. I feel Barrel’s hand brush against the small of my back as he reaches to bump his own crossed fingers with mine. Lock starts snickering and his laughter spreads to all three of us. We scramble past Jack and down the stage steps. I glance back once we’ve put some distance between us. Jack has already turned away, hands on his hips, busily orchestrating the next step in his ridiculous project. The Mayor glares at us as we depart with a look of anxious disgust. Lock gives him the finger as we push through the exit and past the crowd, out of the town square.

I shove my hands deep into my pockets and feel myself start to relax again as we leave behind the hostile eyes of the crowd. As the tension leaves me, the nausea creeps back in from where I’d buried it below the surface of my awareness. I slow my pace. “Why do we have to do this?” I ask.

Barrel and Lock look at me with incredulous pity. “Why would you ask _why_?” Barrel asks.

Lock shakes his head at me. “It’s like I don’t even know you.”

“Right?” Barrel punches him in the arm. “Specially ordered mayhem – _no_ , specially _commissioned_ – with the mayoral office seal and a fucking cherry on top – and she asks _why_?”

Lock just regards me with narrowed eyes. “You gotta snap out of it.”

I meet his stare without faltering, without blinking. Beneath the mask, my poker face is set in perfect position. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Behind us, a cloud of noise and talking rises up the path. We whirl to see the vampires still clustered around the doll as they walk in tight formation. They’ve removed the doll’s head. The tallest vampire has reached down its throat to extract the voice box, and he activates it repeatedly as they walk, shaking it like a can of spray paint, producing a stuttering litany of inhuman noise. Another vampire carries the decapitated head that now looks out with a blank and eyeless stare – the shortest vampire wears its eyes on his own face, laughing as he stumbles around blindly.

Lock snorts in laughter at the scene they’re making, but I find it more ominous than funny. I grab both boys by the elbows and shove them along with me down the path. The gate out of town creaks to life at our approach and grinds its way slowly upward. We duck under the spikes before they’ve fully risen. The vampires continue on their way along the main road toward town without detouring our way. I breathe a little easier.

Without another word to each other, we scurry over the rolling hills out of town back toward the treehouse. As the elevator sweeps us up into the interior, I can feel the boys’ infectious giddiness seeping into me, lifting my mood just a bit. They talk at full volume, well aware of how their voices carry down the piping systems, trusting He is down there listening to us formulate our plans. We’ve never been placed in charge of a kidnapping plot at all, much less involving a major world leader. The possibilities for ransom payments must be astronomical; Lock and Barrel practically have dollar signs swimming in their eyes as they discuss our coup. I can only picture how busy this will keep Him, what a blessed reprieve we might be given.

Barrel and I snag a passing ground beetle in one of His cages, and we toss it to Lock who blanches it quickly in the cauldron. I shove the insect, cage and all, down the delivery tube. A token of our faithful complicity to Him, a tiny sacrifice at His altar. We all feel His low thunderous laughter vibrating through the ductwork.

The more they scheme, the more wild-eyed and riled up the boys become. Barrel tosses weapons around with a recklessness that will definitely lead to injury if I don’t grab them out of his hands first. I snatch the axe from him just as he’s about to throw it like a javelin in the direction of the bathtub. I start to replace it against the wall, then reconsider its possible usefulness on our trip. I add it to the top of my pile.

“We could _boil_ him,” Lock exclaims.

“We could throw him in the _ocean_!” cries Barrel.

They’re losing sight of our assignment. “We’re just supposed to trap him,” I remind them.

“Yeah!” says Lock. He scrambles to grab the biggest spring claw trap off the hanging hook.

“No, no. We can just set a bait trap.” I try to take it away from him, but he’s too quick. “We don’t need –”

“We should take the _cannon_!” Lock cries. “We could set it up outside his door, and when he answers—”

“Yeah, yeah!” Barrel is already scrambling toward the cache of gunpowder. Both boys look swept away in their unchecked mania, eyes alight with a glow that goes deeper than mere mischief. Lock grabs Barrel and shoves him up against the wall. With the fire in his eyes, the tension in his muscles, the veins pulsing in his long white neck, he looks so terrifying he is beautiful. The profile of his body shows his cock half-hard inside his red pants. Where they grapple against the wall, I can’t tell if Barrel is pushing him away or holding him fast. Lock shoves him again, harder. I slam a wooden box against the shelf, and the boys spring apart and look around at me. Their expressions are still not quite themselves.

I grab the box and march over to them. “I wish you assholes weren't so dumb.”

“ _I’m_ not the dumb one,” Barrel snarls.

“Fuck you,” says Lock.

“Shut _up_ ,” I snap at both of them.

“Make me.” Lock smirks.

I clutch my fingers tighter around the handles of the box in an effort to keep control. I long to grab him by the throat, tie him down and torture the cockiness out of him. “Listen. This is what we’ll do. It will be the whole Trojan horse thing – we’ll just lie in wait inside a box. Simple. And we don’t have to _maul_ him in the process. We’ll just jump out and grab him.” I open the box for emphasis, and three scorpions tumble out toward Barrel. For a heart-stopping moment I’m convinced they are spiraltails, but when Barrel just laughs and flicks one away I realize they’re the common forest scorpions, ubiquitous and all but harmless. I used to think nothing of tossing them around like any vermin. Now I can’t even look at them. “I’ll be right back,” I mumble to the boys. I stumble up to my room and to my shelf, to one of the nightshade joints I have hidden under a mason jar. I may be out of all the heavy stuff, but I can’t face going into this completely sober.

When I arrive back, the boys have loaded up the bathtub and are ready to go. I clamber in behind Lock and try to make myself comfortable wedged between the handles of various weapons and Lock’s leg.   He stubbornly takes up more than his fair share of space within the tub’s narrow porcelain confines, pretends not to notice me shoved in next to him like an overlooked footnote as he and Barrel chatter away. The bathtub’s progress along the path rocks us like waves against a rowboat’s prow. I watch the scenery roll past like a reel as we approach the forest and enter into its shadows. Other than our excursions to collect insects and plants around the outer parameters, we don’t enter the forest. Nobody does. I hunker down low and examine the rows of tall, bare trees as we march by. There are no signs of life anywhere. I pull the joint out of my pocket and hold it in my lips as I light a match.

Barrel and Lock stop talking and turn to me at the sound of my match striking. I avoid their eyes and cup my hands over the flame to shield it from the wind as I press it to the joint’s tip.

“What the fuck?” Lock asks. Barrel shakes his head with his nose wrinkled in disgust.

I suck the smoke into my lungs and hold it there, looking steadily back at them. I don’t answer until I’m good and ready to let go. I finally blow a cloud over their heads in a slow stream. “This is me snapping out of it,” I tell Lock. I suck in another hit.

“That’s the opposite of snapping out of it,” says Barrel.

I blow another stream of spent smoke, this time courteously aiming off the side of the bathtub and away from their faces. My only response is to put the joint back to my lips and hit it again.

Lock holds his hand out. “Pass it here.”

The surprise almost jettisons the smoke from my airway before I’m ready to let it go, but I purse my lips together and hold on. He waits, hand outstretched, his face cool and neutral. I exhale. “Hilarious,” I tell him. “Stop bullshitting me.” I suck in another drag.

“No, I’m not bullshitting you. Quit hogging it and hand it over.” When he lunges for it, I let him take it. He holds it with an almost effeminate delicacy, pinky out, eyebrows raised high as he puckers up and puts it to his lips. He glances over at Barrel as he inhales with a long, audible sucking sound. The look of disgust twisted across Barrel’s face deepens as he watches, but he doesn’t say a word. Lock starts coughing, loses all the smoke in an explosive cloud, and shoves the joint back in my direction. “Oh Jesus,” he gasps between hacking. “That stuff is so terrible. Fucking hell.”

“You dumbass.” Barrel shakes his head and turns away, out toward the silent trees.

Lock’s coughing begins to abate, and then he sighs and leans back against me. I take one last hit, then pinch the burning cherry between my fingers to extinguish it and toss the spent paper out into the forest. Lock watches its uneven arc as it flies away from us, buoyed off course by the breeze before it finally falls. He leans back and wedges himself more closely between me and the edge of the bathtub. My body suddenly begins to feel heavy under the weight of the nightshade, and I scoot closer to him and rest my head against his shoulder. He squeezes my hand.

I feel overcome with his gesture of solidarity, failed and disapproving attempt though it was, to join me in my debauchery, to descend to be with me where I am. “Thank you,” I murmur, in a voice leaden with impending sleep.        

I hadn’t been sure he would comprehend all that I’m trying to thank me for, but he squeezes my hand again. “Hey, it’s okay. Birds of a feather, yeah?”

“Now and forever.” My words trail off at the end like dissipating smoke, and I drift into a hovering half-sleep. My brain floats on an anesthetized fog just out of sight of consciousness, only vaguely aware of the bathtub’s rolling gait and the boys’ conversation around me. They start out in whispers, but the volume escalates incrementally as they forget to be quiet.

“No, you dumbass,” I hear Barrel reply to some unheard sentence from Lock. “Are you really that high or are you just…” His words fade out of my hearing, swallowed up by the crunching of the bathtub’s feet through the fallen leaves, the low whistle of the wind on all sides.

Lock leans forward toward Barrel and I slide from my perch on his shoulder, rattle against the weaponry behind us. I moan in weak protest but I don’t want to open my eyes or give up my tenuous hold on half-sleep. I curl up against the curved porcelain wall.

“Well, she’s awake _now_ ,” Barrel sneers at full volume.

“No,” I hear Lock murmur, “she’s still asleep.”

My annoyance is a force stronger than my exhaustion, than the sweet pull of sleep behind my forehead. “Yes, I’m still asleep,” I snap, “so fucking _shut up_.”

The bathtub is finally silent aside from the quiet clang of metal against porcelain. After a minute Lock starts to snicker. I open one eye in time to see Barrel rear back and punch Lock in the arm once, hard. The blow lands with the heavy thud of bone against muscle. Lock looks back at me, catches me watching, and doubles over in high-pitched, breathy giggles.

Barrel throws himself backward against the tub wall and crosses his arms with a huff. “You stupid dickbag. There is no _way_ you inhaled that much of that shit.”

Lock only laughs harder.

“Fucking nightshade,” Barrel grumbles. He turns his stormy expression on me. “You couldn’t get yourself an alcohol dependence? Or what about self-medicating with _candy_? Why do you gotta stink up the air and turn him into _that_?” He nods at Lock, who is now laughing so hard he can no longer make noise.   Lock wipes at his eyes with unsteady fingers, and Barrel huffs out a sigh and looks at me expectantly.

I curl up tighter and turn my face away. “Go fuck yourself and wake me when we get there.”

“Don’t get too comfortable, _princess_ ,” Barrel jeers. I jerk myself up, ready to hit him, but he points to a tiny spangle of color in the greywashed forest, hovering on the hill ahead. “We’re almost there.”

I squint up at the indistinct color in the cluster of trees. It seems hours away, holding steady on the horizon line as we bob ineffectively in its direction. “Like I _said_ , wake me when we get there. And go fuck yourself.” I hunker back down and close my eyes.

Either Lock has regained control of his idiotic giggling fit, or the nightshade haze in my head drags me down even more readily, because I’m no longer aware of any noise around me. I float along with the tub swaying gently across the forest, dreamless and suspended in timeless fog. At length awareness slowly comes to me that we have stopped, that the boys are arguing in increasingly agitated voices. I rub my eyes and pull myself up to a semi-seated position.

All around us, the trees loom in a circle so unnaturally perfect I forget to breathe. I blink up at their branches that hang overhead like a threat. My vision swims and I close my eyes again.

The boys keep arguing – Lock with uncharacteristic whininess, Barrel with barely controlled exasperation. “No, look. Colorful shit all over it, just like he said.” Lock leans out and makes a grab for the tree nearest to us. “It’s the one.”

Barrel yanks Lock’s hand away from the knob in the little door. “Wait, wait, wait. We have to plan this out. How the hell are we supposed to get this giant fucking bathtub through that little hole?”

The giggles creep up on Lock again. “I don’t know, dude. Big things into a little hole, isn’t that _your_ area of expertise?” He manages to stifle his laugh but lets out a snort, which sets off his giggles again.

Barrel gives him a shove. “Oh, shut _up_. Look, we don’t even know if this is the right—”

“No, it is, it is,” Lock gasps, struggling to regain control over himself. “Look at this one next to it, it’s just some plain green plant thing. And this one, what is this supposed to be, some kind of fat fucking buzzard or something. No, this is definitely the colorful one.”

Barrel cocks his head and squints at the oval shape in the middle of the tree. “I wouldn’t call it _colorful_ exactly.” He turns to me. “Well? Is this it?”

“How the hell should _I_ know?”

“You were the one at the town meeting!” Barrel throws his hands up in exasperation. “Were you stoned off your ass there too? Did you pay _any_ attention?”

I grasp the edge of the bathtub and pull myself up to standing. The tree where we’ve parked has an oval-shaped door. The colors seem washed-out, too pastel and mild. It’s nothing like Jack’s bright and twinkling presentation with its vibrant reds and rich greens. “This isn’t it.”

Lock snorts. “You’re both stupid. Colorful decorations, rainbow baubles. This is totally it.”

“Do you even know what a bauble _is_?” Barrel demands.

“Well…no.” He scratches his head and looks momentarily derailed. “Do _you_?”

Barrel hesitates for an uncertain moment. “No.”

“Okay then!” Lock’s smile is triumphant, as if he’s somehow won this argument. He leans forward and snags the doorknob. “To Christmastown!”

The door flings open at his touch as if it was waiting for us to make the first move. The bathtub lurches; we all tumble to the floor in a heap. From my new vantage point, I catch a glimpse of another door two trees down. It’s shaped like his bizarre triangular evergreen, blanketed in colorful decorations, rainbow baubles. Before I can speak, the tub lurches again. Weapons clatter over us. I hear Barrel’s head smack against the porcelain with a resonant thud. Lock starts giggling again.

I can feel a reverse airflow, a suctioning sensation, and the bathtub cants to one side as it tumbles upward toward the tree. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for impact as we move. But the crash never comes. I open my eyes again in time to see the darkness flooding over us. The air is thinner, scarcer, colder, like in the graveyard portals but somehow different. We freefall in slow motion, rotating in a long spiral as we descend. I glance over at my brothers. Barrel’s face is filled with grim horror. Lock just looks nauseous. I hope desperately he doesn’t puke in here, where the laws of gravity and mass aren’t quite in effect.

All at once, yellow light floods back up to us and we rumble to a stop on solid ground. “Holy crap,” gasps Barrel. Lock leans over the bathtub edge and throws up. Shielding my eyes against the searing sun, I squint out at our new surroundings.

I have never seen such green grass before, such a blue sky. So many colors springing forth on so many varied flowering plants. Everything seems glowing with life and warmth. My heavy, dark clothes suddenly feel smothering and oppressive. With tentative movements I swing myself over the edge and lower my feet to the ground, testing the springy surface of the lush grass covering before trusting it with my full weight.

Lock sniffs wetly and wipes his mouth. “This is so fucked up.”

There’s a scraping sound as Barrel picks up one of the weapons. “He said the guy’s office is just at the edge of town. Which way is town?”

Across the grassy field, I can see a large white building and some smaller houses beyond. “I guess it’s that way. But I don’t think this is right.”

“Oh, of course it’s right.” Lock’s voice is a reedy whine that rings in my eardrums. “Let’s just grab the bastard and get home.”

The bathtub begins moving in response to this command, jostling them both. Lock lurches to the other side and retches. I trail behind them through the long grass and watch the insects disperse one by one as I approach. They’re nothing like the angular spiders and many-legged bugs that live among us. These creatures are unfamiliar with their bright colors, their graceful fluttering or nimble leaps among the blades of grass. Something flurries toward me in an erratic flight pattern, brushes against my arm with powdery pink wings. I shudder and break into a jog to catch up with the boys, grab the rear of the bathtub and scramble back in.

We approach the buildings, swaying in unison to the bathtub’s rocking steps as we sit in silence. The towering white structure looms over us as we approach. I can hear music from within, faint chords floating through the large double doors. I can tell it’s a pipe organ, but the music it plays is based on some weirdly bright tonality that grates against my ears. I slink down lower where I sit, rub the back of my hand against my itching eyes.

“What’s _Jesus_?” Barrel asks out of nowhere.

Lock stares at him. “The hell are you talking about? It’s one of your favorite expletives.”

“No, I know _that_. But look.” He points toward the building, to a low sign on its lawn. Neat black letters in its marquee spell out _Jesus Is Risen!_ We all give it a long look as it begins to recede behind us. “What the hell? Clearly it means something else here.”

“I don’t fucking know.” Lock rubs his eyes, red-rimmed against his pale face. He looks itchier than I feel.

Barrel leans over the side, still squinting toward the sign as if it will offer a clue. “It’s something that rises. What the hell? Is it a sun? Is it a bread? What else rises?”

Lock smirks. “It’s a dick. Some kind of grand Christmas pecker.” He starts giggling, then he sneezes.

“Oh, Jesus. You’re so stupid.”

“Watch what you say, the jesus has risen. It’s going to cum down your chimney if you piss it off.” Between the laughter and the sneezes, tears are streaming from his eyes. “It’s going to—” Another flurry of sneezing cuts him off.

“The fuck is your problem?” Barrel nudges him with his foot, but Lock keeps sneezing.

“It’s something in the air,” I tell him. “Don’t you feel it?”

Barrel sniffs. “Maybe.”

“It’s all these fucking colors and flowers and shit.” I dig around in my pockets until I find a dubiously clean handkerchief, which I hand over to Lock. “We need to finish this mission before he goes into respiratory arrest.”

“I’b fide,” Lock protests.

Barrel snorts. “You’re a moron.”

Lock sneezes again. “Sug my dig, dubass.” He moans miserably and swipes the handkerchief over his dripping nose.

Up ahead, something catches my eye. “Shut up, shut up,” I hiss, and I drop down lower in the tub to peer over the edge.

There’s activity all along the hillside across from us as a small gathering of people moves in a slow, sweeping pattern. They periodically lunge into the grass, pull something out to place in their baskets. Their voices blow over to us on the warm breeze, indistinct but pleasant. They let out triumphant little exclamations each time they make a find. We watch in silence. As the crowd gradually migrates further across the hillside, we follow behind.

“They’re harvesting something,” says Barrel.

I shake my head and squint at the crowd. “I’m not sure. They seem awfully excited over a _harvest_.”

“Oh, who gives a fuck what they’re doing,” Lock whines.

The voices of the crowd fade as they disappear around the corner. We pick up the pace, forge our swaying path through the tall grass. I notice something bright pink poking up through the lush blades. “Wait, wait, they missed one.” I heave myself out onto the ground and peer down at it. “It’s some kind of rock?”

Barrel leans out after me and grabs at my arm. “Don’t touch it.”

“Why?” Lock sneers. “You afraid of death by pink rock?”

I ignore them and pick it up. It’s cool in my hand, a smooth and perfect oval. “It’s a fucking _egg_.”

“Oh my god.” Lock flops down and covers his eyes with his arm. “What the fuck is this place.”

I drop the pink egg back into the grass. “Jack’s presentation didn’t have any eggs in it.”

“Oh, just shut _up_ about it already.” Lock pauses to blow his nose. “Let’s just get the asshole and go home.”

The bathtub begins moving without me. I scramble to catch up and haul myself back inside.

Down the slope of the hill, we can see the egg hunters as they join a larger crowd there. They’ve all congregated on the sides of the road that winds its way into the town proper. We stop behind a flowering bush and take in the sight. Everyone’s clothes are light and ruffled: flowing dresses, dapper white suits, bonnets adorned with blossoms. Even their own bodies seem fluffy and pastel – the yellow ducks and the puffy white sheep, the pale pinks and blues of the rabbits’ fur. The crowd cheers as parade floats roll down the road, everyone waving and laughing. One float’s riders toss handfuls of something out at the crowd as they pass. One piece flies off-course and plunges toward the bushes where we hide, then bounces directly into the bathtub with a soft _ping_. We all recoil.

Barrel moves first and pokes at it. It’s small and oval and bright purple; it rolls gently as his finger nudges against it. “Oh, oh, this is _candy_!” He pinches it between his thumb and finger, holds it close to his nose.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Lock snaps.

“No, it’s candy, it’s _candy._ ” Before either of us can stop him, Barrel pops the tiny purple oval into his mouth and chews. Lock and I hold our breath and watch his face, wait for the first signs of whatever poison the bite might contain. He closes his eyes. “Oh man. Oh _man_ that was delicious.”

Lock sniffs. “For the record, I claim all your stuff for when that kills you.”

“It’s not gonna kill me. Shit, I wish I had more of these. I take back every bad thing I said about this fucked-up little town.”

I roll my eyes and turn away to peek through the leaves and petals. The parade has ended; the crowd has begun to disperse. It doesn’t take long until the coast is clear and we can steer the bathtub out of the bushes and toward the edge of town to find the office we’re looking for.

Barrel hops out onto the ground and runs ahead of us, foraging for more of the little candies. He picks them off the road and dusts them off against his sleeve before devouring them, his face full of a rapture so obscene I have to look away. We walk in a silence punctuated by Lock’s sniffles, by the swish of the bathtub pushing through the grass, by the tiny moans of pleasure Barrel gives with each new bite. Above us, the sun begins its descent toward the horizon, and the brilliant aurora of sunset colors, so different from the stark orange light back home, makes me feel dizzy. The unfamiliar music of the strange twilight insects pipes up from the grass around us in a surreal underscore.

The structures up ahead gradually grow closer and closer, and as we approach the gnawing doubt climbs up inside me. I turn to Lock. “This is supposed to be his office?”

“Yeah, at the edge of town. See, it’s right by the gate. It’s exactly like Jack said.”

The buildings seem built into the hillside, like doors installed into the mouths of caves. The grassy hills rise up around them, and blooming vines drape along the sides like flowery spiderwebs. Suddenly one of the doors bursts open and a group comes prancing out. We freeze and watch. We’re far enough away to be inconspicuous, but there’s nowhere to hide if someone looks in our direction.

“Do you think he’s one of them?” Lock whispers.

“Lock, those are _rabbits_.”

He shrugs. “He didn’t say he _wasn’t_ a rabbit, did he?”

The rabbits all hop away toward the city gates. Within the doorway, another figure peeks out, an even larger silhouette. We both lean in to get a better look, and I have to suppress a shudder. “Why are there so many giant goddamn rabbits here? This place is creepier than home.”

“That’s him, that’s him. That’s got to be him.” Lock shifts his weight from foot to foot as if he’s already preparing to attack.

“How the hell do you know?”

“He’s _huge_.”

The office door clicks shut, and the light disappears.

Barrel slinks back toward us through the tall grass, both fists clutching piles of the colorful little oval candies. “What’s the plan?” he whispers. He pops another bite in his mouth and chews with his mouth open. “Bear trap?”

I reach down to the back of the tub, rummage through the piles of weapons. “No, you morons. We’re not going to maul him.”

“Yet,” Barrel adds.

“Yet. Okay. Fine. But right now we need him intact.” I pull out the sack. “Let’s go.”

The bathtub slips across the grass with nearly-silent steps, and we slide out and slink over to the door. “Are you sure this is gonna work?” Lock whispers. He’s wringing his hands, cutting his eyes side to side in clear paranoia.

“Of course,” Barrel hisses back. “We’ll just ditch the theatrics and go simple. Jump him before he knows what’s going on, and then we’ll be out of here.”

Lock sniffs again, rubs his nose with the back of his hand. “Ugh. I still think we should have brought the cannon.”

“Shut up.”

“Ready?” I’m poised at the door.

Lock and Barrel grasp their edges of the bag opening and move a few more steps apart. The bag unfolds like a hungry mouth. “Ready.”

I ring the bell.

The cheery chimes within play some cheesy little melody. We wait for a moment without breathing, and we listen. After a long and terrifying moment of silence, there comes the thudding approach of hopping haunches. Behind the frosted glass window, the head appears, the tall ears. We all tense as the doorknob turns.

The door swings wide. I only have an instant to take in the confusion in his beady eyes, and then we leap at him. We move in unison, bursting from our still positions like perfect clockwork, like the release of a single coiled spring. It’s thrilling when the bickering disappears and we move together like this in perfect formation. Three of a kind, birds of a feather. The triumphant snarl that escapes me blends in with my brothers’ own war cries. We hit our mark with unerring accuracy, and the bag swallows up our target like a devouring snake.

The rabbit thrashes, soundlessly flailing within the confines of our trap. Lock throws himself over the opening while I secure the ties shut. There’s a clang behind us and we both whirl. Barrel stands over the bottom of the bag, the biggest axe clutched in his hands. Within the bag, the thrashing stills.

Lock and I leap up and rush around to where he stands. “What the fuck?” I snatch the axe out of his hands.

“Did you kill him?” Lock leans down and prods the motionless lump.

“Of _course_ not.” An affronted scowl clouds his face. “I just gave him a good whack.”

I shake my head and slide the axe back into the bathtub. “Oh my god.”

“Well, he’s not wiggling anymore. So we can move him easier.” He crosses his arms and stares expectantly at us. “You’re _welcome_.”

Together we drag the bag over the edge of the bathtub, grunting under the limp weight. Barrel clambers inside and struggles to sit astride the lumpy bag. The bathtub’s first few steps shake and falter under the sudden load, but it adjusts as we make our way back in the direction we came, toward the verdant forest in the distance.

We travel in silence. Lock and I trudge along side by side, eyes on the ground directly ahead of us. The long shadows from the setting sun turn the bright plants’ colors even more eerie in the dim light. Lock sniffles with every inhale until I’m ready to smother him myself and put us all out of misery.

“That was easy,” Barrel announces out of nowhere. I startle at the sudden break in the silence. Lock sneezes twice. “Jack’s going to be so happy. Do you think there will be a cash reward?”

“Oh, yeah,” I sneer. “Maybe a new car, too.”

Barrel looks insulted. “I think he’ll be happy.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay. Sure.” It seems pointless to keep voicing my doubt, far too late to make a difference. We followed the instructions, and it will have to do.

We’ve reached the edge of the forest. The canopy of leaves is so thick, it feels like staring into the mouth of a cave. We take a collective breath and press on into the shadows, into the maze of trees. It won’t be long now. Exhaustion creeps up across me like water soaking into my clothes.

Time seems to slow down in the darkness. I can’t tell how long we’ve been moving, or even if we’re going in the right direction. But I’m too tired to panic. We plod ahead, stumbling over protruding roots, sliding on fallen leaves, until I no longer care if we find our way back or not.

Barrel yelps as the creature in the bag begins to stir. “Oh no, he’s waking up.” He grips onto the edge of the tub to keep from tipping out. “What do I do? Do I hit him again? I can’t reach the axe.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lock says. He points up ahead. “Look.”

There it is, the circular grove. It looks different than the one from back home; the live and leafy trees of this place create a different tableau than the stark and barren branches in our forest. But the doors are the same. In the tree trunk directly ahead of us, an orange jack-o’-lantern grins. Its jagged smile is welcoming as open arms.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Lock breathes. He rushes forward, runs up ahead and grabs hold of the triangular knob in the center of the pumpkin’s leering face.

I break into a sprint. “Wait for us, asshole!”

He wrenches the door open before I can reach him. Behind me, the thuds of the bathtub’s steps accelerate as it begins to gallop. I can feel the pull of the air through the door urging us forward, dragging us into its current like the tide. Lock glances behind him and laughs at us. “You better hurry!” He pushes his way into the yawning dark inside.

Behind me the bathtub leaves the ground. I dive into the doorway ahead of it, certain it’s going to crush me as it plows forward. The vertigo kicks in as I tumble inside and gasp for breath in the sudden thin atmosphere. I close my eyes and hold my breath until my lungs scream. I suck in a stream of air that suddenly smells of bonfire smoke and dead leaves, and I open my eyes to see the familiar forest floor.

We sit frozen for a moment, reverent with relief. But then our captive twists inside the bag and starts kicking, and we all struggle to our feet. Barrel stomps on the struggling lump from his seat atop the bag. “Hold still,” he snaps, “or I’ll smack you again.”

It holds still.

I brush the leaves and dust from my clothes and take a good look around. After the visual assault of colors and brightness, the muted greys of home have never looked more lovely. I can see my brothers visibly relax in the familiar dim light. We start the long trek back toward the Town Hall.

We trundle up to the building. The line has dwindled, but still people mill around waiting for their instructions even after all this time. I can already hear Jack inside, doling out loud instructions in a voice like a delusional orator. The band brushes past us on their way out; the dissonant dirge they’re playing sounds like nothing in their usual repertoire. The corpse in the bass catches my eye and gives a lewd smirk as we push through them. I pretend not to see.

The double doors bang against the wall when Lock throws them open. Of course he can’t resist a dramatic entrance. All eyes in the room stare as Lock and I lead the bathtub into the room, Barrel teetering on his perch atop the bag. “Jack! Jack, we caught him, we caught him!”

Jack drops the device he was demonstrating to the Behemoth and hurries down the stairs toward us. “Perfect!” His eyes look wide and slightly crazed; the long hours in the Town Hall have been wearing on him. “Open it up, quickly!”

Barrel leans forward and unties the closure, then tumbles sideways as the rabbit springs from the bag and lands on the floor. Lock glances my direction, his eyes nervous behind the blank stare of his mask.

Disappointment clouds Jack’s manic expression. “ _That’s_ not Sandy Claws.”

 _No shit_ , I almost say. I bite my lip and try my best to sound innocent and shocked. “It _isn’t_?”

Barrel stands back up, looking dazed from the long fall out of the bathtub. “Who is it?” Unlike me, he appears genuinely surprised.

Jack stares at us. We all avoid his eyes and watch the rabbit move down the aisle to the front of the room, then startle at the Behemoth and dive back into the relative safety of the bathtub. The suspicion on Jack’s face sends an unexpected rush of shame flooding warm into my cheeks. “Not Sandy Claws,” he replies.

He doesn’t know what this rabbit is either. I want to laugh at his delusional posturing.

Jack keeps scowling down at us. “Take him back,” he commands.

I inwardly groan at the thought of dragging ourselves back into the forest and into the airless portal, skulking around that bizarre landscape again, then beginning a whole new expedition into yet another new world. My brothers glance at each other, clearly feeling the same. “We followed your instructions,” Lock protests.

“We went through the door,” says Barrel.

“ _Which_ door?” Jacks bony hands clutch into fists; I can hear the edge of exhaustion seeping into his exasperated voice. “There’s more than one. Sandy Claws is behind the door shaped like _this_.” He produces a small, green cookie from the inside pocket of his jacket. It’s shaped like the triangular evergreen, covered in little colored sprinkles.

If they had only listened to me, this mission would be over by now. We’d be finished with the crazy Christmas nonsense and all the stupid people flocking to do Jack’s capricious bidding. “I _told_ you.” The day’s buildup of frustration wells up inside me all at once and pushes me over the edge. I lunge at him. Before my hands close around his neck, Barrel comes at me from behind to knock me away. We all three go down in a snarling, punching heap.

Jack roars. His face is a monstrous mask of teeth and rage. In my head I know it’s just for show, he’s just employing his expertise for fear to get our attention and shut us up. But he drives it with an undercurrent of very real rage, and only his professional self-control hold him back from doing us bodily harm. I have seen this expression many times before hovering above me, the final explosion of rage before His punishment falls. We freeze, shrink back, fall into our practiced stance of quiet repentance.

Satisfied that he’s subdued our misbehavior, Jack turns to the quivering figure inside the sack. “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” he simpers. He turns his glare back to us. “Take him home first. And apologize again.”

We turn and walk as fast as we can without actually running. At home we would never try to leave like this in the middle of parting instructions, and the tiny defiance feels sweet. The bathtub cantors at our heels.

“Be careful with Sandy Claws when you fetch him,” Jack calls after our retreating backs. “Treat him nicely.”

Lock snorts quietly. “Got it.”

“We’ll get it right,” I promise. I give Lock a shove. He rolls his eyes but pipes up along with me, “Next time!” We push through the door and into the chilly night outside.

There are still scattered people in the courtyard, so we keep walking until we’re back outside the gate. I don’t realize where we’re going until the treehouse looms ahead of us. “Aren’t we going back to the woods?” I ask.

Within the bag, the rabbit’s trembling freezes. Barrel punches me on the arm and puts a finger to his lips.

“That’s a long-ass walk,” Lock whispers.

“And He wouldn’t be happy with us if we didn’t…you know.” Barrel nods toward the lump in the bag.

We navigate up the path to the drawbridge, and Lock pulls it open. The creak of the rusty works doesn’t sound as loud as it does when I’m trying to sneak past undetected. The rabbit doesn’t move as we tromp over the drawbridge, doesn’t even flinch when we slam the door closed behind us.

Lock sighs. “Well, that was one giant fail.”

“I don’t know, though.” As he crosses the room, Barrel stumbles over one of the chains we’ve left lying across the floor. “We created some fantastic mayhem. Just maybe not exactly the mayhem we were assigned.”

“I guess so.”

“Not to mention,” Barrel adds, “the bonus points we’ll receive for this fine offering.”

We all glance toward the bathtub. “That’s true,” Lock says. “I hear rabbit stew is supposed to be a delicacy.”

I wrinkle my nose. “That sounds terrible.”

Barrel shrugs as he walks up to the delivery tube. “Maybe we’ll find out. Ready?”

The lump within the bag trembles harder than before. All around us, the pipes seem to pulse with the vibration of His low and sinister laughter.


End file.
